


What We Know of Cages

by CurrieBelle



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fantasy AU, Getting Together, M/M, Memory Loss, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 13:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22357027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurrieBelle/pseuds/CurrieBelle
Summary: In the heart of a bustling fantastical city, Mr. Fell’s Arcane Tomes and Curiosities supplies illustrious adventurers with magical weaponry and armor. One fateful day, a regular customer brings Mr. Fell a strange instrument inscribed with demonic script, which turns out to be a prison for an unlucky lamia demon named Crowley. As far as demons go, Crowley seems to be more disgruntled and sarcastic than outright evil – and all he wants is to be released from his prison.And Mr. Fell has problems of his own: he has no memory of who or what he is. He’s plagued by illnesses and terrifying dreams. Deep within, he believes he might not be human at all, but something much more powerful – and much more dangerous. Mr. Fell’s life is hardly stable to begin with, and Crowley might be the catalyst that causes it to crash down for good.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 96
Kudos: 526
Collections: Good Omens Big Bang 2019





	1. Coincidence

**Author's Note:**

> All of the artwork in this fic is by the illustrious pxmpkinqxeen! A lovely talented artist who has the same absurd sleep schedule as me!

Adam was pressed up on the heels of his hands at the counter, toes dangling above the carpet. He looked like a child browsing the samples in a candy store. He did not look like someone who had swanned into Mr. Fell’s Arcane Tomes And Curiosities and dropped an insanely powerful cursed object on the front desk before the proprietor had even finished his tea.

“Where the-“ Mr. Fell cut an expletive short. “Where did you find this?”

“In the Underdark,” Adam said, kicking his feet.

“The Underdark? What were you doing in the Underdark?”

“Killing spiders!” Pepper called from behind him. She had some kind of fried, flaky pastry wrapped in brown paper, and she took a voracious bite. She was not interested in Arcane Tomes or Curiosities, but she did like to tell people how many things she’d chopped apart that day.

“Wensley said it’s got fiendish magic in it,” Adam explained. “If you touch it, it’ll talk to you.”

Mr. Fell gave him a serious look over his glasses. “You’ve done the right thing, bringing it here, Adam. Sentient instruments can be a dangerous business.”

He turned back down to the instrument in question. It was not, to his knowledge, a weapon of any kind — and as a professional enchanter, he had seen all manner of weapons. No matter how strange they were, instruments of death usually had an implied direction to them; one end was the handle, and at the other end was the killing part. A pointy blade, a heavy rock, what have you. The instrument before them, however, looked to be more evenly balanced. It was an unpolished iron shaft about a foot long, with handles sticking at right angles from each end. At the end of each handle was a strange adornment - a geometric ring on one, and a slight tapered point on the other. It reminded him of a carpenter’s tool. Something one might use to tighten a bolt, or adjust a cart. It would have been completely benign, except that it was also covered tip-to-tip in jagged fiendish runes, and that it glowed ominously yellow, and that the bare wood of the countertop was starting to splinter beneath it.

With the swift precision of a longtime expert, Mr. Fell snapped open a drawer behind the counter, pulled out a tartan tea towel, and wrapped the strange instrument up in one hand. He had a set of half a dozen similar towels. Mr. Fell had enchanted them with a nifty abjuring spell that would stymie any possession or telepathic links for a moment or two. The towels also helped if the enchanted object was slightly hot.

“I’ll give it a look,” he said. He turned, and rested the iron on the back counter.

“It’s not yours just yet,” Adam reminded him.

Mr. Fell looked at the child over his glasses again. He was far too practical for - for however young he was. Too young, Mr. Fell thought, to be adventuring or bartering. He hadn’t the foggiest how Adam’s parents let him run off to the woods or into the blasted Underdark. And he wasn’t the only child of negligent parents: Adam had cobbled together a whole troupe of the little blighters. The four of them would stomp through the curiosity shop, talking too loudly and getting fingerprints on things, at least once a month.

Still, despite their more worrisome aspects, the Them (as their little adventuring band had been branded) came across their share of enchanted trinkets and spell components. Mr. Fell had cut a supply deal with them. He suspected a non-negligible percentage of the gold he traded them was set aside for ice cream.

“It shall take me at least a day to assess its worth,” he replied crisply.

Adam sighed, and dropped down from the table. “You know, there are a lot of Enchanters on the Promenade-”

“Two hundred gold advance, as is traditional,” Mr. Fell cut in. “You can pick up the difference tomorrow.”

“It’s got to be worth more than traditional,” Pepper said. “It talks. That’s not traditional.” As she spoke, she dusted her fingers off. Pastry flakes showered like snow onto the Marquesian rug. Mr. Fell winced.

“It certainly will be,” Mr. Fell said, “tomorrow.”

Adam shrugged. “I guess we’ll take that.”

Mr. Fell counted out their coin, and the pair of them flounced out of the shop, presumably to join their other companions. He snapped his fingers, vanishing the pastry flakes they’d left in their wake. An observer might have noticed that Mr. Fell’s look of fatherly disapproval had faded, and he was smiling fondly instead.

After a pause, he snapped again. The sign hanging in the shop window flipped over to CLOSED; the doors locked themselves obediently. He had not wanted to scare the children more than was necessary, but this project would require his undivided attention.

The iron had not destroyed anything yet. It remained wrapped snugly in its tartan towel. 

Mr. Fell leaned against the countertop and scratched idly at the white-blond curls near his temple. A sentient instrument - what a headache! They had the potential to be as dangerous as any enchantment, and on top of that they came with exceptional ethical quandaries. Was it ethical to “own” a weapon with a personality, was a sentient item considered a living thing, and if it was, could it legally vote in local elections, and so forth. 

Worse still, the device before him was fiendish. Any two-bit spellcobbler could make a wooden stick shoot a fireball, but fiendish magic was much more artful. It was subtle, corrupting, deceptive. Mr. Fell would need to keep his wits about him.

He made a cup of tea, and drank it all the way to the dregs while staring at the iron. The shop began to smell faintly sulfuric. A bit of black char started to appear on the tea-towel.

Keeping his wits about him was more of a challenge, these days. Either he was getting old or getting sick, but Mr. Fell was not the enchanter he had been five years ago. He was prone to headaches. His concentration tended to wander inappropriately. He was always cold. And the itching, good lord. A perpetual torment, that.

“There  _ are _ a lot of enchanters on the Promenade,” he reminded himself.

To another ailing magician, that statement would have been a soothing one - a call to look for a replacement, or at least for some support. To Mr. Fell, it was a reminder that if he wanted to remain the best enchanter on the Promenade, he could not let a weird knobby tool from the Underdark defeat him, headaches or no headaches.

He set down his empty cup, and went to retrieve his gloves. Unlike the tea towel, the gloves were not enchanted. He wore them on principle. He slipped them on and brought the iron into the back of the shop.

Mr. Fell’s Arcane Tomes and Curiosities was a strange shop with a strange layout. The Curiosities did brisk business; there was no shortage of adventurers in need of endless ropes, driftglobes or silent-soled boots. Minor nobles would come by for cufflinks that changed colour with their moods, or flowers that bloomed as they walked by — the usual vanity projects. Mr. Fell kept these at the front of the shop, in glass display cases.

The actual Tomes-and-Curiosities building was quite sizable, but if you were to enter the front room, you would find it unexpectedly small. Ah — Arcane  _ Tomes _ and Curiosities, you’d remind yourself. As only the Curiosities would be before you, you would conclude that surely the bulk of the building was used to hold the Tomes. You would not see any doors or archways to those mysterious stacks, except the one behind the Enchanter’s counter. Perhaps you would then inquire about purchasing a spellbook, or ask if you could browse the selection. 

Mr. Fell would explain to you, with some exasperation, that he wouldn’t just sell his Arcane Tomes willy-nilly to anyone who wanted to dabble in any old magic. Instead, he would provide the finest magical papers and inks, and for an hourly fee a wizard could be escorted in to see the tomes, and copy what spells they needed while seated in one of the library’s cozy reading nooks. The books themselves, he would emphasize, were not for sale. His temper at the question would be short. Far too many people assumed they were the singular exceptions to his rules. A few of them decided of their own volition that Mr. Fell had some naughty books in the back, and they were disappointed (he kept those books in his bedroom, like a gentleman). A handful had also grossly misinterpreted the meaning of the word ‘escorted’, and that led to all sorts of awkwardness.

Had that indeed been his business, the cozy reading nooks would have done nicely. They were quite privately tucked away behind the shelves, overstuffed with thick pillows and splendid armchairs and loveseats. They were windowless, but an enchanted coldflame lamp hung above each one, providing the warm glow of firelight without the associated danger. Each one was also outfitted with a desk or coffee table, and those doubled as Mr. Fell’s workbenches.

He ducked into the coziest of the nooks that night, his second cup of tea in one hand and the towel-clad tool in the other. He gathered the remaining key components: Abyssal dictionaries, diagnostic spells, reading glasses, some chalks, powders and moonstones in case he needed to draw up a quick ward, and three ginger biscuits because he suspected this would take much longer than an hour. 

Then he sat down, and spent a moment rubbing his temples. It was barely four in the afternoon, and already the daily headache was coming on strong. It started as a light throb at the front of his skull, promising to worsen the longer it was there, like the first twist of a thumbscrew. Perhaps a distraction would help.

He threw back the top of the tea-towel and lifted the iron in his hands.

“Bloody finally,” it said. “All that ceremony just to pick up a stick? Are we married, now?”

The voice came from somewhere just over his shoulder, or behind him, or otherwise just out of sight, and yet it also clearly belonged to the iron rod in his hands. It was animate, quite charming, and not terribly sulky despite its words - as if it took great pleasure in making theatre of its misery. Masculine, but not distinctly so; accented, but from somewhere he couldn’t place; and expressive, cycling through speeds and pitches with the looping aimlessness of a happy drunk.

“You’re not a stick, you’re an enchanted — thing.” He said, trying not to let his confidence flag. “I think a little care is warranted.”

“Enchanted thing,” the voice repeated mockingly. “I’m an axle wrench. Git. Well,  _ I’m _ not an axle wrench. But I’m in one, at the mo. Who’re you?”

He considered the question. Conversing with the object would make it easier to understand, but he was quite wary of giving the creature too much material for its deceptions. A name did not seem too generous, at least not yet. “You may address me as Mr. Fell.”

“Mister Fell,” the voice echoed. It was an address almost completely devoid of respect. “Mister” wasn’t much of a title, but the little hiss in that excitable voice made it a downright mockery. “Sure. Call me Crowley.”

Mr. Fell put the wrench down, and recorded the name in his notes. “Very well. Crowley. Now, if you’re amenable, I’d like to assess your capabilities.”

“Oh, go right ahead,” Crowley drawled, his voice absolutely sarcasm-saturated. “You going to try me out on a horse cart, first, or a plough? I can’t wait.”

“Magical capabilities. You wily tool,” Mr. Fell quipped. He flipped open the spellbook, and turned to a bookmarked page on magic detection.

“Haven’t got any,” Crowley said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I haven’t got any magic in here. If I did, don’t you think I’d have whisked myself out ages ago?”

Mr. Fell’s eyes narrowed. Sentient weapons (or wrenches) were almost always created to give the wielder nasty magic. Otherwise you were just paying exorbitant prices to give your sword a lip.

He flipped the wrench over, and back again, scanning the runes carved into it. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a hasty, unstable mish-mash of a necromantic soul binding and a high-level polymorph.

This was not at all how one made a sentient weapon. It was something else entirely, and much more despicable.

“Goodness,” he said. “Someone sealed your soul in here?”

“Yes, one giant upstart prick named Hastur. Timing couldn’t have been worse, either. I’d just gotten my palace of debauchery the way I liked it. Finally picked out the rugs.”

“You had a palace, then?” Mr. Fell said. He turned back to his notes and wrote as swiftly as he could, recording the clumsy spellwork in one column and Crowley’s story in another. “Were you a Demon Prince?”

“Nah, no, not half so overqualified, me.” Crowley sounded pleasantly flattered. “Just a minor Duke of the Lamia.”

“Duke of the Lamia,” Mr. Fell repeated, faintly. He rose, setting the iron on the table. His more arcane bestiaries were in a shelf across the way. He extracted one, and riffled through to the L section.

Despite the distance he had put between him and the iron, Crowley’s voice still rang as clearly as if he were leaning on Mr. Fell’s shoulder. “Right,” he was saying. “Nothing you couldn’t handle, I’ll tell you that.”

Ah, there — the lamia noble. Demons of seduction and deception, servants of the Dark Prince Graz’zt, leaders of lesser lamias. Ordinary lamias resembled humans with the hindquarters of lions; lamia nobility, by contrast, had humanoid upper bodies and lower bodies of snakes. The bestiary warned that they were powerful magic-users, specializing in glamours, seductions, and deceptions. The authors had included a helpful lithograph of a ferocious lamia nobleman, jewelry flashing on his wrists, scimitars in both hands, and a limp, unlucky victim in the coils of his serpentine tail.

He shot a doubtful glance at the axle wrench. It called to him: “So, you’ve obviously got the magic thing figured out, you. And I am in a pickle. D’you think you could get me out? Change me back?”

Mr. Fell almost laughed. How transparent! “Oh, you won’t trick me so easily, fiend.”

“It’s not a trick! What d’you think I’m going to do, d’you think I’m going to eat you?”

“Mightn’t you?” Mr. Fell said brusquely. “This bestiary says you’ll eat human flesh.”

“Well, human, yeah,” the wrench admitted. A long pause. “But not frequently or anything. We don’t get a lot of ‘em in the Abyss. And I wouldn’t eat _ you! _ I’d owe you one, wouldn’t I?”

“Would you try to eat my clientele?” Mr. Fell pressed, coming back to the table. “Or corrupt their souls, perhaps? Hm?”

“I — no!” An aggravated sigh. “Look, I don’t know what I’d do. Don’t know where I am, don’t know who you are, and I haven’t got plans beyond ‘stop being an inanimate bloody object’!”

The wrench did not look embarrassed by its outburst, because it was a wrench. In the resulting silence, however, Mr. Fell managed to feel ashamed enough for both of them. He was more sympathetic than he would have liked. 

“There’s no need to get cross,” he sighed. “I know precisely how you feel.”

“Oh?” the wrench sniffed. “Spent a few decades trapped in a dirty napkin, did you?”

“Not exactly.” He took a quick, harsh breath. “But I can understand how afraid you must be. If demons do experience fear, that is.”

“We do,” Crowley said. The animation had left his voice.

They sat in silence for a moment. Mr. Fell took a ginger cookie, nibbling his way round the edges. The centre part of a cookie was the softest. He liked to save that for last.

“Maybe you’d best give me back to Adam and Wensley,” the demon sneered at last. “Least that way I might find someone who’ll help.”

“Let’s not be hasty, now,” Mr. Fell said. He hadn’t the slightest idea what he would do about Crowley, but he did not especially trust the Them to make a more informed decision. Besides, the children had brought him this puzzle, and he had forked over two hundred gold for it. Handing it off felt a bit like giving up.

He adjusted the gloves, pulling them tight, and picked up the axle wrench. “Crowley, I don’t want you to hurt anyone else, but nor do I want you to suffer indefinitely. I shall have to think about this. In the meantime, I will do everything I can to ensure you have a pleasant stay with me.”

“To ensure I have a pleasant stay,” Crowley echoed.

“Yes.”

“You are quite literally unbelievable,” he said, his voice flat with shock.

“Oh, hush,” Mr. Fell said. “Now, there are still a few tests to run. Are you comfortable?”

“Put me back on the — whatever the other thing was. The soft thing. Was that a carpet?”

“It’s a tea towel. Can’t you see it?”

“I’m a wrench. I haven’t got eyes!”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Mr. Fell muttered. He made a note of it.

The tests Mr. Fell planned to run should only have taken an hour, but he stayed up with Crowley late into the night. The diagnostics themselves took about as much time as Mr. Fell expected, all told; it was the conversation that made everything take ever so much longer. The demon was both perpetually curious and indefatigably anxious, and he seemed unwilling to restrain any thoughts that crossed his mind. This was both a blessing and a curse: Crowley never stopped peppering Mr. Fell with fretful questions, but he volunteered comprehensive answers in return. The enchanter had not expected a demon of deception to be so open, but Crowley was never evasive in the slightest. He was as blunt as the instrument he’d been trapped in.

In axle-wrench form, he could neither see nor hear, as he lacked the organs for it. It turned out that their conversation had been entirely telepathic, with Mr. Fell speaking his thoughts aloud only out of habit. He could make Crowley understand a pointed, silent thought, but Crowley could not hear the bell at the front of the shop, or the thud of a book dropped on the floor. His only real sense was that of touch, with a particularly sharp perception of heat.

“I had that back when I was a living thing,” he lamented. “I could pick out a warm heartbeat a hundred yards away. It’s all fuzzy now.”

Mr. Fell corrected his notes — a sharp, but reduced, perception of heat.

The most interesting discovery was that Crowley did have magic: he simply couldn’t use it himself. He had the knowledge, and the energy, and the metal in the axle wrench would have served as a fair arcane focus, but he couldn’t trigger even the simplest cantrip on his own. They puzzled over that one for a good while, tossing ideas back and forth. Mr. Fell thought that without a body to vocalize incantations or make magical gestures, there was no way for the magic to ignite — no spark with which to light the fire, so to speak. Crowley theorized that Hastur had added the limitation as a final touch to his curse, because he was a prick with multiple doctorates in prickishness from the Academy of Pricks.

“Well, higher education aside,” Mr. Fell said, “I believe you should be able to do magic in conjunction with someone.”

“Can we try it, then?” Crowley said, his voice growing bright. “Oh, please please please please-”

“No.”

“Just a little? Let’s just do a little illusion, something harmless. C’mon, it’ll be fun!”

“Why would you want that?”

“Why  _ don’t _ you?” the demon pressed. “You’re assessing my magical capabilities, aren’t you? You can theorize all you like, but if you don’t give me a try, you’ll never know for sure.”

Knowing the demon couldn’t see him, Mr. Fell pouted furiously. As much as he hated to admit it, Crowley was absolutely correct. 

He found a suitably benign spell they could share: a visual illusion, impermanent and intangible, quite harmless. As Mr. Fell took the instrument with him and stood, square-shouldered, in the middle of the library, he began to feel very foolish. This could be a ploy to gain control of him. Perhaps he would speak the incantation for an illusion and end up cursing himself, or switching their places, or falling under the lamia’s notorious charm.

Unfortunately, his continued curiosity had pinned his good sense to the mat quite a while ago, and was now slowly choking it to death.

He flicked the wrench forward like a wand, and Crowley cast the spell. A burst of heat flared through his palm, like the sensation of grabbing a too-hot teacup, accompanied by a stinging flash of light.

Mr. Fell blinked away the afterglow. The big, blood-red belly of a pitcher plant lay slung between two aisles of books, crowned with a halo of waxy leaves the size of dinner plates. It sat on a morass of green tendrils that seemed to be burrowing into the carpet. Small black bugs whizzed and whirled back and forth over the plant’s mouth. They produced no noise, but some part of Mr. Fell’s brain tricked him into hearing the buzz.

Crowley was still warm from the afterburn of the magic. “How’s she look?”

Mr. Fell considered. “Well, there certainly is a monstrously ugly plant right in the middle of my shop.”

“Shut up,” Crowley said cheerfully. “I love these things. They’re more likely to eat you than I am.”

He cackled. Mr. Fell rolled his eyes, and dismissed the illusory plant with a wave of his hand. “Do you mind at all if I try one?” he asked. “One in my control, this time?”

“Shoot.” Crowley said. His mood had clearly improved.

Mr. Fell thought for a moment, and then flicked the wrench again.

He conjured a simple table of pure white wood, and a matching chair. On the table, a blur of glass and gold struggled to take shape. His memory was not clear enough to form anything but hazy impressions. Dials, gauges, bulbs and needles melted and morphed into each other. Transparent tubes and copper wires connected nothing to nothing. It was never still; the whole image shifted and rippled, trying in vain to create something the conjurer could not picture. Only one shape was truly clear: a pair of golden shackles, and the chain that bolted them to a heavy copper box on the floor.

He dismissed the image wordlessly.

“Did that work?”

For a brief, paranoid moment, Mr. Fell wondered if Crowley had sabotaged the spell — but he had tried the same thing before, on his own, and garnered similar results.

“Oh, yes,” he lied. “It worked.”

By then, it was nearing midnight. Mr. Fell’s headache, which had minded its own business for a while, was apparently quite sour about being ignored. It returned with an eye-pulsing, ear-burning, groan-inducing vengeance.

“I think I should retire soon,” he said. “Do you sleep, as a wrench?”

“Not really. Just rest me somewhere warmish for the night, if you can be bothered.”

He could certainly do that. There was a stout open-hearth fireplace in his bedroom. Mr. Fell chose a sturdy pillow without too many frills or ribbons, set it on the ground by the light of the fire, and rested Crowley on top. He felt a strange, motherly compulsion to set the tea-towel over him and tuck it in like a blanket.

“There,” he said. “Will that do?”

Crowley said nothing. Mr. Fell couldn’t guess what he’d done to deserve the silent treatment, but his headache had gone from intense to unbearable. He stumbled over to the bed and collapsed on top of it, not bothering with the sheets or his shoes.

“You’re an odd duck, you know,” Crowley grumbled. 

Mr. Fell was already asleep.

~X~

And so, Mr. Fell’s Arcane Tomes and Curiosities acquired a mascot, propped up in a display case behind the front desk, next to a little card that indicated he was ‘not for sale’. Mr. Fell had hoped the shop’s first mascot would have been an appropriately mystical familiar — maybe a skinny black cat, or a raven — but Crowley was as mysterious as an inanimate object could hope to be, swathed as he was in his abyssal runes, giving off a faint odor of jungle rot and charcoal, and producing a lazy, narrow, constant wisp of white smoke. He was very intriguing, for a tool.

“That’s just as funny as when Hastur said it,” Crowley grumbled.

Since no one else could hear Crowley, the mascot thing was more of a private joke than an actual job. Perhaps the proprietor didn’t have to display Crowley so openly, but he had promised to treat him well, and it would have been rude to leave him in a drawer all day. Well — Crowley probably wouldn’t have noticed at all, but his keeper would have felt guilty. Once the shop had closed, he even took to carrying Crowley around with him, slung through his belt like he planned to fix a carriage. It made him feel productive. That was nice. It was like setting up one’s workstation or writing a shopping list. The pleasure came from the pretense of productivity, rather than any actual accomplishment.

At night, he returned him to the cushion beside the fire.

Crowley didn’t say much at all in those first few days. Perhaps he was observing, or just, as the kids would say, spacing out. About three days into their cohabitation, Mr. Fell realized he’d assumed wrongly. Crowley could only hear the thoughts of people who had touched him, so unless Mr. Fell specifically directed his thoughts Crowley-ward, the poor trapped demon would be sitting there in complete silence. 

Mr. Fell was not certain how to fix the problem. He thought he might make an effort to include the shop-mascot in shop business, at least.

The next customer to come in bore a familiar face: a grizzled-gray paladin so laden down with old weaponry that he clanked and clattered when he moved. His bespectacled squire trailed him, holding the door open with his foot and carrying a conspicuous double-armful of paper packages.

“Sir Shadwell,” Mr. Fell bowed in greeting. “And young squire Newt. How may I be of service?”

He thought of Crowley as he spoke, and performed the mental equivalent of letting Crowley perch up on his shoulder, opening his mind and sharing his senses so the demon could perceive both sides of the conversation.

_ Whossat?  _ said Crowley, in his mind.

_ Regular customers,  _ Mr. Fell thought.

Sir Shadwell slammed his hands on the table and leaned forward. “I’ve come with a warning for you. Word is we’ve had fiendish activities in this quarter of the city.”

_ Not it, _ Crowley put in hastily.

“Oh my!” Mr. Fell said. “What sort of fiendish activities?”

Sir Shadwell leaned closer. “Three people gone missing. Respectable citizens too, aye. Devilish sigils cropping up at the Dockyard. And, eh — what were they on about this morning at the briefing, laddie?”

The squire shifted, trying to keep the packages steady. “And, um, there was a — a dinner party, last night, for a foreign noble, a Baron Sable? All his guests turned up dead, and he’s one of the missing ones, now.”

“That’s it!” Sir Shadwell slapped the table. “And all the dead men were bone dry, like someone sucked the juices out.”

He made a wicked slurping noise as a demonstration. Mr. Fell shivered.

_ This wasn’t you, was it? _ Mr. Fell thought, shooting a quick look over his shoulder.

_ No! Didn’t you hear? “Devilish” sigils. I’m a demon, not a devil. _

“Does that make a difference?” he snapped.

“You’ve got a soul of ice, Mr. Fell,” Sir Shadwell said gravely.

“I mean, people don’t typically die of dehydration at dinner.” The squire said, adjusting his glasses.

“Oh,” Mr. Fell stammered. He clapped a hand over his mouth, realizing his error far too late. “Oh, no, of course — that’s terrible, terribly unusual.”

_ You’re an idiot, _ Crowley grumbled.

Sir Shadwell narrowed his eyes, which were already set thin with suspicion. Mr. Fell wondered if he could still see. “You’re acting mighty skittish, sir,” he said. “Do you perhaps have any information to share about fiendish activity?”

Mr. Fell swallowed. He slid his weight ever-so-gently to the right, quite conscious of the foot of glowing, steaming, abyssal-branded steel behind his back. “I have no idea why you’d ask that,” he sputtered. “Preposterous, really.”

The paladin drew slowly away from the front counter. “Hm. Right,” he said.

Behind him, the squire tried to push his glasses up his nose with his shoulder. It was rough going.

_ Oh, good,  _ Crowley said cheerfully.  _ They’re idiots too. _

Still bewildered and flush with nerves, Mr. Fell gave an entirely-too-chipper laugh and shouted, “Did you want to see the books, then? Yes, right this way—” 

Later, as Mr. Fell re-shelved the books the paladin had devoutly scrambled, he began t feel a little fidgety about keeping a soul in a box. He took Crowley from his perch, and set him on a side table in the library as he worked.

“So that was fun,” Crowley said, dripping with sarcasm. “Your nosey paladin friend and his newt.”

“They’re regulars,” Mr. Fell said. “Always rooting out one fiendish criminal or another. The city’s rife with evil.”

“Mm. You had me going there, you know. I really thought you were going to hand me over.”

“Hand you over?” Mr. Fell echoed.

“Yeah. To Sir Fiendish Activities.”

“Why on earth would I do that?”

“For smiting, I presume,” Crowley mocked, in a faux-righteous voice. “Divine purification of this innocent wrench, or something-or-other. You really weren’t thinking about it?”

“Of course not!” Mr. Fell said. He was utterly aghast. “I don’t want to destroy you.”

“Huh.” Crowley paused, sounding perplexed. Mr. Fell suddenly wished he was conversing with something that could convey facial expressions. He started again; “Why’d you let me eavesdrop on your little chat, then, eh?”

“Well,” Mr. Fell began, straightening the spines of the fiendish bestiaries, “It must be very tedious to sit there in your wrench all day. I thought a bit of conversation would alleviate the boredom.”

“You thought I’d like talking to those two?”

“I thought it would be better than silence.” Mr. Fell said crisply.

“Huh,” said Crowley.

Then he was quiet for a long while, as Mr. Fell finished putting away the books. He decided he absolutely could not stand to have a demon judge his abject failure of a kind gesture. What would Crowley actually _ enjoy? _

He returned to the coffee table about half an hour later, with a veritable heap of books in his arms - pulp novels, long poems, illustrated fairytales, hard-backed histories. “What sort of books do you like?” he said. “Obviously I’ll be busy with customers sometimes, but I could read to you whenever there’s a lull.”

“What?” Crowley squawked.

“Books,” Mr. Fell repeated. “Do you not have books in the Abyss?”

“Course we’ve got books,” Crowley said. “Steal them from wandering wizards all the time. Er—” and then he fell silent.

Mr. Fell heaved a great sigh, letting his shoulders drop. “What is it?”

“Are you going to keep me like this?” Crowley’s voice was small. Nervous. “Your pet demon-in-a-box?”

Mr. Fell flinched. “No. I just haven’t decided what to do about you, yet.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“What if I could free you directly into the Abyss?”

“I don’t want to go there!” Crowley spat. “They threw me out!”

“You could try and reclaim your palace.”

“…Nah, I don’t think I want it.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s a bloody chore. You’ve got responsibilities, blood wars, torture and all that. But once you’re deposed, well — nobody really expects you to seduce mortal souls to damnation anymore.”

“Oh.”

A long pause. “If I ever see Hastur again, I’ll scoop his eyes out, but that’s just the principle of the thing.”

“I see.”

At last, Crowley said, “If those are my only choices, Fell, I’d rather be your demon-in-a-box.”

They sat together, and the clock ticked, and Mr. Fell could not decide.

“Have you got anything — I dunno. Fun? An adventure?”

Mr. Fell looked forlornly at the wrench, and tried to smile. “I certainly do.”

He read to him until the sun went down –– a tale of heroic adventurers, and dragons.

~X~

Mr. Fell became more selective about the company he permitted Crowley to keep. He only let him intervene on the most intriguing customers and the most obnoxious. Some of it was personal indulgence: Crowley had a stellar vocabulary of abyssal insults for anyone he found boring, rude, bossy, priggish or in some other manner dissatisfying. At other times, the  connection was for both their sakes. It gave them something to gossip about in the evenings before they could settle down and read together.

The guilt in Mr. Fell grew larger every day, spreading like an infection. He was holding Crowley’s very senses captive, now. The demon only heard and felt what Mr. Fell curated. It must have been maddening. He started carrying the wrench with him more often, asking how Crowley was faring — he had traced th e Abyssal runes so many times he was developing violinist grooves on his fingertips. 

He tried his best not to confront the bigger question, and distracted himself with the little problems. Products to count and re-count, earnings to tally, enchantments to craft, hidden corners to clean. The ethical challenge of Crowley seemed too daunting for any single day.

But the question twisted through his gullet and screwed his brow tight, and soon he was waking with the headaches already firmly entrenched, the shivers already trembling through the sheets, and the aches in his shoulders and knees already raw and dull. Worse, he was inexplicably, constantly starving, no matter what he ate. On one morning he’d gone through a full loaf of rye bread, dense as a brick, and still felt peckish. A basket of market peaches that was supposed to last a week were gone in a day and a half, and he found himself tearing through the last of the fruits long before they had ripened, the fuzzy skin peeling clean and juiceless from the woody, fibrous flesh. He finished the last peach and rolled the stone through his teeth, thinking deliriously that it was solid and sour and might be enough to fill the pit in his gut — and then, confused and slightly horrified at himself, he spat the stone into the basket and tossed the whole thing out to the street.

Soon, all the agonies were so persistent that even Crowley, who strictly speaking had half a sensory organ at best, noticed something was wrong.

“You feeling alright?” he asked, when Mr. Fell had spent a jot too long bent over a single book in silence. Crowley was resting between the pages like a bookmark.

“Yes, quite, thank you.”

“You’re muttering on like a loon.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Oi! Put the book down, already.”

“I will when I’m done!” Mr. Fell snapped. Realizing the strength of his voice, he sighed, adn rested the book open on his lap, rubbing his temples. The axle wrench sat there immobile, but, in his pit of self-pity, he imagined it looked sympathetic.

“What’s the problem?” Crowley grumbled. “Why’re you so caught up on this, anyway?”

“Why do you care?”

“I’ve not got much else to care about, have I? You pass out and die, who knows where I’ll end up?”

Mr. Fell fiddled with the edge of the page, though he quickly stopped. With his headache, the sound of fluttering paper seemed to be tearing his head in twain. “It’s a request from the Archmage,” he mumbled.

“And that makes it special, does it?”

Well –– Crowley might as well know, if he was going to be lingering awhile. Embarrassed, Mr. Fell fixed his bowtie, as if making himself presentable before a sightless creature would somehow make the confession simpler. “Five years ago,” he began, “I found myself with no memory of who I was, and the Archmage saved me. He gave me this property, and all the books, and everything I needed to start over. I don’t know what I would have done without that generosity.”

He shut his eyes. He could still see the Archmage sitting above his bed, handsome face drawn up in an expression of handsome concern. It was one of the few memories he had, and a rather precious one.

“So, what, is he your brother, or…?”

“He, ah —” Mr. Fell fought a blush. “He’s more of a friend, I suppose.”

“Hm,” was all Crowley said.

Mr. Fell breathed in and out a few times, preparing to return to the book. His pounding head –– well, it hadn’t settled, but Mr. Fell was a very determined man. Crowley, however, interrupted his thoughts: “That doesn’t seem a bit suspicious to you? Handing a store full of arcane trinkets over to someone with no memories?”

“Well,” Mr. Fell sighed, “of course it would seem suspicious to you. You’re a demon. Sometimes humans are kind to one another, and that’s reason enough.”

Another long silence, one that did not at all feel satisfying. Mr. Fell had been certain of what he said –– and yet, at the same time, he wondered if Crowley could also be right.

“I guess.”

The concession didn’t help. The longer he spent with Crowley, the more he grew to appreciate the demon’s character, and the better he wanted to care for him; yet the main cause of Crowley’s torment, of his poor moods and general nihilism and fanged comebacks, was a curse that Mr. Fell refused to break. It felt wrong to preach about the kindness of humanity when he himself was acting as a captor. Crowley was trapped, and Mr. Fell held the key to his cell and insisted on keeping it locked.

~X~

_ Dear Archmage; I have acquired a sentient instrument, and I would seek your counsel. There is a sentient- _

He scrawled it out. Couldn’t rightly say “sentient” twice in one go.

“You writing a love letter?” said Crowley, who was currently being used as a paperweight.

“No,” Mr. Fell said primly.  _ Acquired a sentient instrument within which is trapped the soul of a- within which is trapped? _ Terrible structure. Awkward as anything. He scrawled it out again.

Crowley put on a simpering voice. “My dearest Archmage, I lie awake every night dreaming of your voluptuous loan, between reveries of ginger snaps and chocolate biscuits—“

“Hush, you,” Mr. Fell scolded, feeling a bit flushed. He flicked the axle wrench with a fingertip. The strike pinged off harmlessly, and the tip of his finger throbbed.

“If you come to me in the night, I will lie awake for my love, aching, prostrate-“

“Excuse me?”

“It means ‘lying down’, Fell, what did you think I was saying?”

With a furious huff, the shopkeeper scrawled the message and read aloud, “Archmage Gabriel, I have acquired a sentient bastard trapped within an axle wrench, do you have any suggestions on how to proceed? Yours-“

“—your beloved sugar plum—your darling cupcake —“

“Cordially—” Mr. Fell put in, sputtering around a very stubborn laugh. 

“Your sweet honey biscuit—“

“—Mister Fell!” He finished, half shouting, and as he signed it, and the paper disappeared with a snap of sparks that turned to dry, papery ash, and Mr. Fell was chuckling freely. He didn’t mind Crowley goading him, really — it made the whole message easier to write in the end. A little ray of appreciation whisked through his chest, like sunlight flickering through windswept branches. He looked affectionately, disbelievingly, at Crowley in his prison. 

“I am doing this to help you,” the shopkeeper chastised. “The Archmage will know what is done in these circumstances.”

“Smiting,” Crowley said immediately. “With pricks like him it’s usually smiting.”

“That will not be at all necessary,” Mr. Fell fired back.

“And what if your Archmage says it is?”

Mr. Fell paused. He could not imagine Gabriel being that cruel. Blunt, yes, he could be blunt. Practical, certainly. But never needlessly cruel. “I shall simply have to convince him otherwise.”

“Hm,” Crowley said.

The demon said nothing more, but a wave of dissatisfaction seemed to buzz from the axle wrench. Mr. Fell sighed, and took the wrench into both his hands. “There is nothing to fear, my good fellow. No harm shall come to you, I swear it.”

A long silence. The uncomfortable buzz seemed directed at him now, vibrating through his hands.

The demon finally grumbled, “If you say so, biscuit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You,” Crowley said pointedly, “are soft, and you’ve got the good sense of a lump of dough. You’re a biscuit.”

“I shall take that as a compliment,” Mr. Fell said defiantly.

“And that’s how I meant it,” Crowley said. After a pause, he added, with scathing sarcasm, “or perhaps I’m just looking forward to how tasty you’ll be, once I eat you in your sleep.”

“Oh my,” Mr. Fell said, imitating the tone. “Whatever shall I do. I find you ever so intimidating, o wretched wrench.”

“Shut up,” Crowley drawled, and Mr. Fell put him back on the table.

Mr. Fell wondered, then, if he would find Crowley as frightening in his true form, or if the coils and scales were merely so much decoration on a harmlessly prickly spirit.

~X~

The reply came later that night:

_ Mr. Fell — _

_ Are you looking for a buyer? Write me a full list of magical capabilities & I’ll see who I can find at the Lyceum. _

_ G _

Mr. Fell frowned. It seemed the Archmage had misinterpreted the question — or perhaps it was difficult to accurately discuss matters of free will in twenty-five words.

He did not have time to contemplate the issue himself. 

The bell chimed. Mr. Fell frowned. He looked up from the book. He’d closed the shop three hours ago, and it was dark. Perhaps someone had—

Crowley’s voice pinged through the back of his head like a shot, sharp and panicked. 

_ Fell, run. _

“I beg your pardon?”

_ Wait, no, don’t run. Just creep out the back, maybe they haven’t noticed us yet. _

“Who?” He asked, as the thunk of unhurried bootsteps drew louder, closer—

_ The devil––  _

Mr. Fell stumbled to his feet just as a woman rounded the corner. She wore an exquisite set of black leather armour, stitched together with rivulets of red almost as bright as her scarlet hair. Her face was perfectly sculpted but Mr. Fell found her too intimidating to be beautiful.

_ Fuck, _ Crowley said. _ It was nice knowing you, biscuit. _

She smiled, a placid, disconnected smile that left her eyes dark and humourless. “You’re Mr. Fell,” she said.

He nodded, clutching the book in both his hands like a shield. Two other figures emerged from behind the shelves - a slender man in an ebony doublet, with big black eyes like the depths of a dry well, and a pale, immaculately composed elf in grey robes. 

“Mr. Fell,” said the woman in leathers. “You have so many books.”

“Yes, um — I do, thank you.”

“That’s wonderful,” she said. She did modulate the pitch of her voice, speaking like someone who felt emotions, and yet it sounded so precisely, perfectly deployed, executing sentences all according to plan, that he could not believe it for a moment. 

“You know a young man named Adam,” she said. Her smile broadened a fraction. He could see her white teeth peeking out from her parted lips.

“Um, I certainly couldn’t say that I don’t,” he stammered.

_ Don’t fuck with her,  _ Crowley hissed. _ You bloody idiot. _

A flash of movement in Mr. Fell’s peripheral vision, and he turned, bewildered, to the right, where the man in black had interposed himself between them and the door, smooth and soundless as a bookmark between pages. He tilted his head back and sniffed, then exhaled, long and rattling.

Red and Grey were both looking to him; he nodded.

“We’d like directions,” said the red-headed woman.

Mr. Fell straightened the front of his tunic. “You shall have to look elsewhere.”

_ You fucking loon!  _ Crowley shouted in his mind.  _ Just tell them! _

Her smile split apart like a widening gash. In a burst of movement too loud and fast for Mr. Fell to process all at once, she shot forward, shoved him into the wall, and closed a hand around his throat. He choked against the pressure, scrabbling his hands uselessly over the shelves behind him in a cacophony of falling books and shattering vials. 

Red smiled. “Have you changed your mind?” She said sweetly.

Behind her, the elf rested their fingertips on the nearest display. The wood beneath their touch turned a sick, dessicated yellow-grey. Fungal growths spurted from the joints, and the whole piece collapsed, glass shattering, and merchandise plunking to the floor like rotted fruit.

_ Hey _ , Crowley said,  _ Let me help, please. Let me— _

“Please, please,” Mr. Fell wheezed, pawing uselessly at the strong hand on his throat. Tears were welling in his eyes, and he felt something –– something angry inside him, something righteous and massive, that scared him more than any of the creatures before him. A minute longer and he’d burst clear through his own skin—.

_ I’ve got you _ , Crowley said, with such quiet confidence that Mr. Fell wanted to sob with relief. _ Trust me. _

The storekeeper squeezed his eyes shut, and pawed at the shelf behind him. In the mess of broken glass and dust, his fingers skimmed the heated metal of the axle wrench, and in that brief moment of contact he gave himself over completely, opening his mind and his magic. He felt the white-hot charge of a spell working, rushing through him, an empty conduit through which the demon surged, obsidian-black and magma-hot, huge and hypnotically beautiful—

The hand around his throat abruptly opened, and Mr. Fell tumbled down, barely keeping himself steady and upright on the shelves behind him.

“Waste of time,” Red spat, and dropped him.

Black and Gray looked to her.

“Are you sure?” said Gray. 

“It isn’t like you to leave a witness,” said Black.

“He won’t talk. And in exchange for his life, I suspect he’ll be quite generous.”

She selected a sword from the crumpled display case, and squeezed the pommel. The blade burst into flame. She smiled. “I like this one. I’ll keep it.”

The flames went out. She whirled the sword back into its sheath and shoved it through her belt. With a crisp, sarcastic salute, she turned on her heel and strode out into the night. Her companions gave Mr. Fell dark, dangerous looks, and followed.

Mr. Fell slumped down onto the ground, pulling the axle wrench with him, and holding it tight against his chest with both hands. When his breaths finally slowed, he asked, “What — what did you do, Crowley?”

“Suggestion spell,” Crowley said. “You alright?”

“I’m fine,” Mr. Fell breathed. “Thanks to you.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley preened. “Fancy that, little old me, pulling an enchantment off on an  _ erinyes. _ ”

“Erinyes?” Mr. Fell echoed. He looked forlornly around his store. It had been quite mercilessly ravaged.

“Mmhm. Powerful devil. Nothing to sneeze at. Unless you’re us. We’re a good team,  _ Master  _ Fell,” he said, delivering the title with such dripping reverence it could only have been sarcastic.

There was a long, long silence. Mr. Fell looked down at the axle wrench, tracing his thumb up and down the length of the metal. It felt pleasantly warm, like it had been left on a stove.

“Crowley,” he said.

There was no verbal answer, but had the impression of someone leaning into him. Lazily, attentively. Propping a chin on his shoulder, perhaps.

“I’m going to let you out.”

_ Really? _ Crowley said. His voice pinged out like a spark –– a burst of sheer optimistic excitement. Mr. Fell flinched, ashamed all over again, if only for not doing this sooner. As sarcastic as Crowley was, his delight seemed a pure and honest thing.

Mr. Fell stood, carrying the instrument in both hands. He rounded the front counter and paused in the middle of the shop, where there was the most space. It felt altogether too solemn. “Please, gods, don’t let me regret this,” he said, in an attempt at levity.

“You won’t,” Crowley promised.

With a faint, fond smile, Mr. Fell lifted the cursed iron, holding it outstretched as if it were a wand. He spoke a simple dispelling formula in Celestial, and watched as the jagged Abyssal runes flickered and burned away, one by one, in miniature starbursts of holy light. The metal trembled in his hands - and then he felt a rush of power, and the sensation of the world reorganizing itself.

Sudden as a geyser, a shadow poured out of the iron. It was not quite liquid and not quite smoke. It swirled and hissed as it fell, and it gathered in a deep, roiling, misted pool on the floor. Mr. Fell, stunned, could only hold the iron in both hands and watch as more and more of the strange essence gathered on his carpet. Hopefully it wouldn’t stain.

Movement began, deep in the liquid black; a massive creature seemed to be swimming underneath. It gained form, and began to rise, higher and higher, spiraling around and around on itself. The inky shadow formed a perfect helix, climbing to seven feet tall, nearly bursting through the ceiling of the bookshop. There, it hesitated, trembling; and then the shadows began to drip away, spilling from a distinct, solid form. A crown of soft-curled red hair, first; a narrow face with striking cheekbones, eyes closed; peaked, light-bronze shoulders; a nude human chest and whip-slender arms; then, just at the point where things might have become inappropriate (or interesting), a lacelike border of blood-red scales at the navel, darkening to black at the sides above the hips. The last of the liquid melted away from the form of a massive snake. Loops and coils filled the narrow aisles of the bookstore, until everything around the creature felt small.

Mr. Fell pressed himself back into the front desk, very quickly cataloguing his regrets in case an attractive snake-bodied man was the last thing he ever saw. There were, perhaps, worse ways to go.

The creature cracked his neck, and stretched his arms wide, and gave a shiver that trembled through his entire snakelike length. Mr. Fell could hear it passing through the coils and across the floor,  _ thump-thump-thump-thump. _

He opened his eyes. They were dusky orange-yellow, veined like a raw gem. They stared down at the little shopkeeper, unblinking, studying.

“H-hello,” Mr. Fell tried. “Um — Crowley?”

“Mr. Fell?” the creature said, sounding twice as surprised — which didn’t make too much sense, as he was the one who had been suddenly, stunningly corporated.

“Yes, of course,” Mr. Fell stammered.

“ _ No, _ ” the snake said, scandalized.

“That’s very rude of you,” he retorted, squaring his shoulders. “After I just released you and everything!”

“Where’s the rest of your-” Crowley spread his hands wide, and made a frantic flapping gesture. “Your you?! Your body!”

“My body?”

“Yeah, the rest of — whatever you are? Are you even — yowch!”

He had been slowly coiling upward in his distress, and his head collided unexpectedly with the ceiling. “Oh-” Mr. Fell said, and rushed forward uselessly as the creature called Crowley lowered himself back down. One yellow eye was closed — his lip was curled in a sneer, baring sharp fangs. Both of his narrow hands were folded over his thumped head.

“Shit, balls, bloody Hells,” he was muttering.

“Well, I don’t know what you’re on about,” Mr. Fell contended, as the snake continued to sink. “This is my body.”

“Come on, biscuit,” Crowley — because at this point, it was definitely Crowley — said. “You don’t need to hide anything from me. I can see through your little shapeshifty trick.”

“Shapeshifty trick?” Mr. Fell echoed, blinking.

“Yes, the shapeshifty trick. I can do it too, can’t fool me.”

He was now hovering at Mr. Fell’s eye level. The shopkeeper had rarely seen such an expressive face; he could tell from the confusion in his eye that Crowley was halfway to believing him, but by the challenge in his brow, he was somehow still skeptical. “You’re hiding the shape of you, but not all the-” he flapped his hands through the air again. “Heat! There’s the word for it. Or I guess the lack of heat, in your case. The cold.”

He crossed the floor, his scales producing a long, sibilant hiss. Crowley slithered past Mr. Fell’s shoulder, around his back, inspecting. “Couldn’t see when I was in my little box, but I could still sense the heat around the room, remember? And you, you’re a big, big cold spot.”

Mr. Fell frowned. “Cold?”

“Yes.” Crowley poked his shoulder in wonderment. “Chilly.”

With a spectacular flail Mr. Fell turned to his left. He didn’t like the idea. He’d tried so hard to make his shop inviting, and ‘inviting’ and ‘cold’ never went together. “How big?” he asked.

Crowley curled around to the front of him again, rising up slightly higher. “Bigger than your little shop, here,” he said, and shut his glowing eyes. “Taller than the ceiling. And broad. Thirty, forty feet wide, I’d say.” He gave a short, close-lipped laugh that came across as unbearably condescending. “That’s not exactly what I got.”

“Forty feet?” Mr. Fell said. His voice gave out halfway through. He pressed a hand to his chest. And he could feel a heart fluttering within, a real human heart. “Oh, my.”

“Yep,” Crowley said. He cocked his head to the side. A cascade of scarlet curls fell to his shoulder. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Fell huffed. “I’m just me, I’m an enchanter and a human one, thank you very much, and - and this is my shop, and you’re-”

“Shhh, sh-sh-shh.” Crowley hushed him. It was a soft, soothing sound, complimenting the hiss of his serpentine body against the floor. The coils were tightening around the shopkeeper, and Crowley was descending closer again, laying both his long-fingered hands on Mr. Fell’s shoulders. “Alright, human enchanter Mr. Fell. If that’s what you want to be, that’s what we’ll call you.”

“It’s what I am!” Mr. Fell insisted.

“Yes, alright,” Crowley said, his brow quirking in impatience. He lifted his hands away. “Alright.”

They stood in silence for a moment. A thick, cool weight was pressed against the back of Mr. Fell’s ankles. He looked down at the glimmering black scales circling his feet and felt unaccountably jealous. A few other warring feelings spilled over each other in his heart, one atop another.

“I’m sorry to have disappointed you so,” he said at last.

Crowley shrugged. “Oh, you haven’t, really. I was thinking I’d have to defend myself from some walking iceberg monster-thing, so — bit of a relief, if anything.”

Mr. Fell gave a slightly wobbly smile, and looked up again. Crowley’s shining yellow eyes were close to his. The slitted pupils were uncanny, but not unattractive.

“So, then,” Mr. Fell breathed. “This is you. Crowley.”

“Are _ you  _ disappointed?” he teased.

“No, no, this is almost exactly what I expected.”

It was mostly true. He’d expected the tail, the strange eyes, even the bare chest. The face was perhaps more human than he had envisioned — almost personable, now that he wasn’t scowling. The rusty-red curls were most surprising. They looked soft. Mr. Fell was halfway to reaching for one before he stopped himself, tangling his fingers in front of him instead.

“I suppose I should thank you for at long bloody last acceding to my request,” Crowley said, and whirled both his hands into a very melodramatic bow.

“You’re quite welcome,” Mr. Fell said. “Um — what will you do now?”

“Hm. D’you know, I’m not sure.” Crowley planted both hands on his hips, right where his skin morphed into gleaming black scales. His coils twisted with his thoughts. “Maybe take a little gander about the town here, see what I’m working with. Ah!” He snapped, and pointed to Mr. Fell. “I should pay you back for letting me out. What d’you want — need to curse anybody? Poison a tax-gatherer? Oh, I could enchant someone to be your lover. That kind of thing does wonders for headaches.” he gave a wicked, excited grin, like a child about to pull a prank involving a live bug.

“Goodness, no,” Mr. Fell said. “I’m quite happy with where I am, thank you.”

“Ah, well,” Crowley said. “Let me know if you think of something. I really would like to get out a bit. Care to join me?”

“I’d be delighted to join you,” Mr. Fell began, “but, dear boy, what about the erinyes?”

“Oh, them. Don’t worry, I can smell them a mile off. We’ll just avoid them.”

“If you’re going to walk around outside then you’d better - um-”

“Disguise, right.”

The scales on the back of Mr. Fell’s ankles began to move, slithering across his skin. He wobbled. In a heartbeat, the tail had vanished, and split into a pair of long, slender legs. Mr. Fell sensed a blush crawling up his cheeks and to the roots of his hair, and pinned his eyes determinedly to a spot just above Crowley’s forehead.

“Better to do this at night, I think. I never got the hang of making my eyes right.”

“Right,” Mr. Fell said weakly. His eyes flickered quickly down and then back up.

There was a long, strained pause.

“I’ve not got any pants on, have I?”

Mr. Fell shook his head.

At almost the exact same time, they stumbled away from each other - Crowley trying to cover himself with his hands and the shopkeep swinging his gaze up to the furthest corner of the ceiling. “Oh, Hells and all her circles, I didn’t-” “-it’s alright, I mean, I’m not looking, I didn’t see - it’s fine-” “-haven’t you got a - a curtain or a towel or-” “-maybe I’ve a robe that’ll fit-” “-don’t turn around, you lusty bugger-” “-sorry! Sorry, I just - sorry-”

Mr. Fell stumbled into the back room, grabbed one of his rain-cloaks and threw it out into the store. After that, he pressed his face directly to the wall.

One shy thought began to creep into his conscious mind, in the short moments he was alone. Crowley’s observation about the cold shadow he cast — it didn’t sound wrong. It sounded no less wrong than his own body — this cumbersome, clumsy, not-quite-right thing he felt like he was wearing rather than inhabiting.

“Alright, I’m as decent as I can hope to be, dressed in naught but a cloak,” Crowley called, his voice dripping with dissatisfied sarcasm.

Annoyance was much easier to bear than existential dread, so Mr. Fell swallowed the thought and poked his head out from the back curtain. Crowley did indeed look rather silly, with the bell-shaped cloak buttoned all the way down the front. Like a very large lampshade. Mr. Fell smiled and tried to make it not look wicked. “It’s not all bad,” he said. “I’ve got an extra pair of boots at the front.”

“Wonderful, cloak, boots, and naked legs,” Crowley repeated. “That’s in vogue these days, is it?”

Mr. Fell rolled his eyes, and drew a quick incantation in the air, conjuring the illusion of black stockings and a shirt collar. They had no substance, and it felt a bit like folding clothes onto a paper doll, but Crowley looked satisfied. Or, at least, he looked like he wouldn’t complain any further.

“I think we’d best head to the tailor, don’t you?” Mr. Fell said crisply.

“First port of call,” Crowley agreed. Mr. Fell passed him, headed for the front door. Crowley hung back a moment, and then joined him, with a gentle tap on his shoulder. “Mr. Fell?”

“Yes?”

He stuck a hand out of his cloak, between the buttons. His narrow mouth bore a crooked, smug, appallingly handsome smile.

“Pleasure to meet you in person.”

Mr. Fell took his hand and shook it, as quickly as he could, before he could really understand the sensation of Crowley’s hand in his — how warm it would be, how well it would fit. “The pleasure is mine,” he said.

They slipped out into the street, where the first cool drops of a late summer rain began to fall.


	2. Love

The more talented tailors - where Mr. Fell was inclined to shop - were perched up in the Cloudtop District, but none of them would be open so late. They settled for a middling candidate on the promenade. He conversed lightly with the proprietor, a blonde half-elf woman who looked harrowed and half-asleep, while Crowley skulked about collecting dour black shirts and tunics, black hose and trousers, black shoulder-capes and black velvet vests, and two black satin dresses. His boots were black, ankle-high. As the tailor fitted him for a black jacket, Mr. Fell snuck off to pay her assistant. He knew, quite vividly, that Crowley had nowhere to keep money and hadn’t brought any with him.

Mr. Fell wondered if lamia were colourblind. Crowley skimmed past any garment that wasn’t black as night or darker. Any flashes of colour were small: a little yellow embroidery on the cuff, or bejeweled buttons, or the scarlet lace under the hem of a skirt. Perhaps he just had a firm sense of style.

Crowley did not seem to realize that money would play a part in the transaction until they were headed out the door, though he did have the grace to look ashamed when he realized Mr. Fell had taken care of it.

“It’s no trouble, dear boy,” Mr. Fell blustered. “You can work it off at the shop, if you like. Give me a hand.”

“That’s a fine idea, me and customer service,” Crowley sneered. “I don’t exactly exude an inviting presence.”

“Well, you can try looking mysterious, if you’d like,” Mr. Fell considered. “That’s fitting for an enchanter’s shop. Here, now, stop fussing with that-”

Crowley had pawed at the collar of his shirt enough to turn it inside-out. Mr. Fell pulled them to a stop at the street-corner, unrolled the collar fully, and flattened it again.

“How do people wear so many things at once all the time?” he complained. “If I lift my arms too quick I’ll burst like a bug out of a cocoon.”

Mr. Fell grimaced. The shirts fit perfectly well. He - well, he could feel that they did. His hands were folding the collar at Crowley’s neck. His fingers trembled a little, suddenly aware of their position - one somehow both intimate and incidental. He tried to ignore the heat of the skin under his hands, and the slight protruding bump of Crowley’s collarbone. He was shorter than Crowley but not quite short enough, because he could still tell that the demon’s eyes were locked on him. They hovered in his peripheral vision like twin moons. When Mr. Fell, after nearly forgetting what he was doing, fixed the collar to his satisfaction and stepped away, Crowley was still staring.

“What?” he said.

“Just trying to figure you out, that’s all,” Crowley said. He tilted his head to the side, and his curls spilled across his shoulder again. 

“I’m really not very complicated. What’s there to figure?” he babbled.

“Hmm,” Crowley drawled, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Even you don’t know everything there is to know about you.”

He did not blink very often, Mr. Fell noticed. It was unsettling.

Mr. Fell straightened his waistcoat. “Well. If you happen to figure that out just by standing here, do let me know.” It was one of his more feeble attempts at light-heartedness. 

“Alright then,” Crowley said. He was completely immobile, except that his smile had become less of a hint and more of a fact. 

Then, he broke the spell, and looked away.

They had made half the walk back before Crowley spoke again. He was tugging on his ear, or fiddling with the curls just behind it. “It’s just the minute I gave you power, you gave it away.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You gave it away,” Crowley repeated, sounding frustrated. “I gave you powerful magic, completely at your disposal. Anything I could do, whenever you wanted it, and the first thing you did was give it up.” He scoffed. “You wouldn’t get far in the Abyss, that’s for certain.”

Mr. Fell looked up, wearing a thoughtful pout. “Oh, I don’t think of it like that,” he said. “It’s more that I - well, I really couldn’t bear holding you prisoner like that any longer, since you saved my life and all.”

“I wasn’t saving your life,” Crowley scowled. “Just didn’t want to end up in the hands of an Erinyes. Dyou know what she would’ve done with me?” He gave a melodramatic shudder. “No, that was self preservation. That’s all.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Fell. The admission wounded him more than expected, but when he glanced at Crowley next, the demon wore a look of helplessness, almost a plea. Mr. Fell understood that he had missed something, but he hadn’t the faintest idea what it was. “Well. I don’t suppose it matters anymore, does it? We’ll just have to make the best of this.”

The platitudes spilled from him without thought or impact, but they worked their magic on Crowley. He was nodding vigorously. “Right. Um—“ he seemed about to say something else, but he shut his mouth and waved a hand indistinctly toward the street. “Yeah. Better get on, then.”

They did, Crowley trailing behind him until they came to the front of the store. Then, at the last minute before he could let them in, the demon took three too-swift steps and cut him off, barring the door with his hand. Mr. Fell opened his mouth, indignant, but Crowley overran him.

“Close your eyes.”

Mr. Fell’s gut response was that he would do no such thing, and he was about to say as much, but Crowley’s eyes were strangely serious, and there was gravity in his voice. 

Mr. Fell took him in a moment longer, and then obediently closed his eyes.

In the darkness, Crowley felt agonizingly close to him. His long, slow, rattling breaths were passing across Mr. Fell’s cheek. The sounds around him were sharper: the rattle of Crowley’s nervous hand on the door, the chirps and chirrs of strange insects, the clatter of the city at night. When Crowley spoke he must have been closer still, for how clear and warm his voice became. “You read about me in those books of yours,” he purred. “Did you know that if you look a serpent lamia in the eye, they can control your mind?”

“I read something to that effect,” he said. He swallowed, his voice trembling.

“It’s not so dramatic as all that, but it’s not  _ untrue,” _ he admitted. “Practically second nature.” 

The wood creaked again. Aziraphale felt something brush his cheek, hover for a moment, and then drift away. Crowley’s fingertips, he realized. “If you want something badly enough, all you need to do is look, and asssk-”

A shuddering breath cut his words short. Mr. Fell was swaying. He wanted to lean in to the touch of this strange, silken creature, but at the same time he did not dare. “Are you worried you’ve enchanted me into doing your bidding?”

“You’re saying everything I want you to say.”

Another touch, light as air, from those slender fingertips. This time they were spread across Mr. Fell’s throat, as if he was considering how best to choke him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” the demon was saying. “But if I did, even a little, any spell you’re under might just break.” 

“I haven’t been enchanted, Crowley.”

“You’ve got enchantment magic in your aura right this minute.”

Mr. Fell blinked his eyes open, and smiled generously. “Oh. Is that what’s worrying you?”

Crowley frowned at him, and withdrew his hand.

“It’s alright, I always do––” Mr. Fell explained, showing Crowley the golden ring on his smallest finger. “It’s from this.”

The demon inspected it, his eyes narrowing. “What’s it do?”

“I’m — well, I’m not fully certain,” he admitted. “It was a gift. If you’re sensing enchantment upon me, this is why. Nothing to fret about.”

Doubtful, Crowley took Mr. Fell’s hand in both of his, and brought the ring into the moonlight. “You’re wearing an enchanted ring, and you don’t know what it does?”

“Yes.”

Crowley’s response was saturated with sarcasm. “Fantastic idea.”

“It’s — it keeps me from — I don’t know, but it’s keeping back something dangerous.”

“You?” Crowley said, with a crooked grin. “Dangerous? Yes, you’re terrifying. The scourge of book-buyers and ginger cookies. Come on, take it off, I want a look.”

Mr. Fell tore himself away, and Crowley raised his hands in surrender.

“Fine, fine! But you should find out what it does.”

“No,” Mr. Fell said firmly. “I don’t want to know.”

Crowley, speechless, shoved his hands in his pockets. “You’re mad.” he said at last.

“Well, at least now you know you’re not — corrupting me, or whatever it is you were fretting over,” Mr. Fell said, trying to bring the mood up. “You’ve just asked me to do something and I’ve refused, so you can’t be dominating my will.”

“Right, right, right. I’m comforted.” Crowley rolled his yellow eyes, and shoved the door open. Mr. Fell followed in behind him, trying to swallow his disquiet.

~X~

As was his duty as an upstanding citizen, Mr. Fell reported the assault upon his shop immediately the next morning. He rushed off to the paladin’s lodge, and made a report to the paladin’s pitiful squire Newt. He bustled to the City Guard’s bulletin board, and scrawled a warning notice and descriptions of the criminals. He even –– after ensuring he was not followed –– stopped by Pepper’s house, informing her in a conspiratorial tone that Adam was likely in danger, and instructing her to stay far away from any hellish creatures in disguise as beautiful red-haired women.

He considered writing to the Archmage, as well –– but it seemed irresponsible to bother him with something so trivial as a few roaming devils. Besides, he was reticent to pull the Archmage’s attention back to him when he had a similar vile creature at loose in his own home!

Mr. Fell hurried back to his shop twice as quickly.

To his surprise, what he found there was not the chaos that he had left in the morning. He was slightly stymied. The rotted display case had been cleared away, and all the shattered glass swept up. Some of the shelves had been rearranged; the room looked bigger and brighter, as every ray of sunshine seemed to reach further. With the space granted by the lost display case, the lamia had crafted himself a little stand for several small potted plants, and was now hovering over them in humanoid form, twisting a long curl of hair around his finger and muttering to himself. As Mr. Fell watched, enchanted, one of the plants seemed to stretch its leaves and grow that much taller.

“That’s right, you wee bastard,” Crowley growled. “Show me what you’re made of.”

“Crowley?”

The demon jumped. His curls bounced all at once. His golden eyes were wide, almost embarrassed, but Mr. Fell was smiling so broadly he swore his cheeks were about to burst. “Did you fix the place up while I was gone?”

As if it were something to be guilty of, the demon shrugged a single shoulder, and tapped one of the seedlings’ pots with his fingertips. “Not very smart of you, leaving the whole place such a wreck.”

“It was very kind of you to fix it.”

“Yes, well, I needed space for the plants.”

He released the seedlings. Mr. Fell smiled at them encouragingly. They looked rather like the illusory plant Crowley had created while still a wrench: fleshy little carnivorous things, growing into their green baby teeth.

“Where’d you run off to, anyway?” Crowley drawled, lifting one impeccable eyebrow.

“Oh,” Mr. Fell said, straightening his tunic. “Nowhere of import. Just to let the guards know about the demons prowling about. They’ll put up a reward and some brave adventurer will likely hunt them down.”

He frowned. The expression was not lost on Crowley, who leaned against one of the display cases and said, “What’s on your mind, biscuit?”

“I just wish I could be of more help, is all.”

Crowley’s other eyebrow joined the first. In a shrill voice, he called “You want to go out there and try and kill an erinyes? When was the last time you cast a spell without sitting down and thinking about it for an hour?”

Mr. Fell folded his arms across his stomach and winced. “It’s pathetic, isn’t it? I don’t even think I could kill something if I tried.”

Crowley sighed. “Not pathetic, it’s just —” he gestured vaguely around at the shop. “You have your thing and you do it well. You don’t need to go running off sticking dragons with swords. ‘S what I like about you. No ludicrous heroics.”

Mr. Fell grew pink. “I suppose, when you put it like that — slaying monsters isn’t the only way to do good.”

Crowley sneered. “Well, yeah. If you like that sort of thing. Doing good.”

“I do,” Mr. Fell said firmly.

The conviction seemed to give the demon pause. He stared for a moment, not blinking, and then tossed his hair again. “Then you’ve done your share of good things. You domesticated a vile, quarrelsome demon.”

“Is that what I’ve done?”

Crowley gave him a furtive glance, and then stared down at his shoes. “If you’ll let me stick around, yeah.”

Mr. Fell’s heart grew. “Of course.”

A long, delicious silence, where Crowley only looked at him, his smile growing wider and wider. “Alright. Alright, will do. Have you got any whiskey up here, or is that drink too sinfully good for the mortals about?”

~X~

And so  _ Mr. Fell’s Arcane Tomes and Curiosities  _ lost its mascot, and gained its first assistant. Assistant was a bit too narrow a word, in truth. Really, Crowley was part assistant, part chef, part landscaper, part roommate, part sarcastic narrator. As the days dragged on (and the case of the devilish intruders remained unsolved), he managed to take on more and more roles. 

Unfortunately, the longer Crowley spent in the shop, the more Mr. Fell’s eyes began to linger on him.

During the day it was distracting, because Crowley was attractive and nicely dressed and he moved like a raindrop sliding over the curve of a thigh, slow and smooth and close and clinging. Mr. Fell trusted him with the transactions while he supervised the library, and he positioned himself so he could see Crowley’s back through the open door. He learned his body language — impatient slouches, perpetual fiddling, ankles or legs always crossed even when he stood upright. 

Mr. Fell did not know if he preferred the skirt or the hose. The hose let him see the sharp lines of his wiry calves, but the dress swirled around those same legs with elegance, hinting at the shapes rather than exposing them entirely. Crowley often tied his hair back — loose and low when dressed masculine, and up in elaborate knots while feminine. Either way was lovely: an autumn crown of leaves on a black-barked tree.

They traded tasks, and they brushed past each other, and they threw questions back-and-forth, and in the rush of the day they barely noticed that they were building a particular kind of trust. It was the trust of two qualified professionals, happy to hand off tasks to each other and knowing they would return to success and not disaster. 

But that was all in daylight, in operating hours. It was so much easier to exercise restraint before the sun went down.

The truth was that the lamia was impatient with his human form, and he stripped it the moment he was able. Mr. Fell would stand up from behind the desk, lock the front door, and turn the window-sign to CLOSED. In ardent anticipation, Crowley would rise from his post to join him. Together they would let down the blinds - one front window each, then Crowley on the eastward windows, and Mr. Fell, squinting against the fading sun between the buildings, on the west. Then the demon would sigh, lustrously and wordlessly. He’d weave across the shopfront on his narrow legs, and somehow, in a transformation halfway between the play of shadow-puppets and the smudge of still-damp ink, he would round the next bend on his serpentine body. Then he walked an impertinent line between propriety and nature, stripping the jackets and doublets and upper layers of human costume, casting them across the nearest chaise or loveseat, until he was left in a shirt, invariably a black one, half-buttoned or half-laced.

With such a thorough disrobing — not only of his clothes, but of his humanoid disguise — as part of their ritual, Mr. Fell’s eyes were bound to linger. It could be excused as curiosity at first, perhaps. Trying to catch the precise moment where bent knees and ankles and calves finally became serpentine. He disguised it primarily as disapproval, raising his brows at Crowley whenever a new crumpled bit of velvet landed on an armrest or bookshelf. It was neither. He stared because the demon was entrancing. Beautifully liquid in his movement, careless and sprawling and artful in his stillness.

Once he realized how often, how much, how indulgently he was staring, Mr. Fell mostly forgave himself. Of course a demon of lust would make a sultry show of everything. Crowley probably didn’t even realize he was doing it. And of course he would want to be in his natural form when he could. It was like brushing pomade from one’s hair at the end of the day, or unlacing tight shoes. Half the pleasure of getting dressed up was in the taking-off. He obviously didn’t mean anything by it, and if he’d been shy of any part of the transformation, there were half a hundred nooks and crannies to change in.

So, Crowley could undress and Mr. Fell could stare, so long as that was where it ended.

Because a demon was a demon, after all. Given the chance, Crowley would — oh, chain his soul to eternal servitude, or use him as a sacrifice in some fiendish ritual for power, or something equally horrific. A melodramatic fantasy, perhaps, but he lapsed into it to supplant any others. Whenever Mr. Fell began to stare too long, he would think of the picture of the lamia lord, of the dying man in the clutch of the snake.

~X~

Night was pressed against the windows, and a red-lipped Crowley lay crosswise in the armchair opposite him, an ill-mannered drawl in a fine dress. She retained her human form, but not her human boots, and her toes curled and uncurled, rasping in their stockings. Mr. Fell was not looking at them, at her, at all. He had set the fourth of six pairs of soft leather shoes on the table before him, heel-to-toe in parallel. The first three were complete, lined up on the couch beside him, their enchantments humming and thrumming in harmony. The final pairs lay in a crate on the floor.

Between Mr. Fell and Crowley — who Mr. Fell was not looking at — lay a mess of chalk dust, ink smears, and pulverized crystals, three books all open and thoroughly annotated, a wooden dish of powdered ginger-root, a spool of silver thread and a silver needle thrust through a pincushion shaped like a fat, button-eyed dove, and all of it shivered in the light of ten tallow candles. Frankly, it was more of a mess than the fastidious enchanter usually put up with, but he was working through a headache again, and keeping his eyes religiously downcast.

“When was the last time you cooked without a recipe?” Crowley asked. Idly, she kicked the hem of her skirt so it flounced up into the air, and fluttered back down. 

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.” Mr. Fell said. He was trying to concentrate.

“You could do those enchantments blindfolded and you’ve still got the books open.”

“Well. You could be quiet, and yet you’ve still got your mouth open.”

Crowley threw her head back and cackled. The candles cast her shadow six ways across the back of the couch, and they all laughed along. The gesture displayed a long, narrow diamond of gold-brown skin, from the deep vee of her dress’s collar to the thin arch of her throat, and he had a swift, dizzying impulse to trace the border of the shape with his fingers.

Mr. Fell’s rubbed a smudge of chalk off the glossy wood. A symbol that needed re-writing anyway, if he wanted to make another pair with the same enchantment.

He pushed his reading glasses up. “Well. Is there something you’d like me to make you?”

The black hem of her skirt fluttered up again, with another kick, and she smiled crookedly. “I don’t wear shoes.”

“You can wear shoes.”

“I wasn’t asking for anything specific.”

“Then what were you asking?”

She made a noise that was more of a shrug than a word. “I only thought you might be getting bored doing the same thing over and over.”

Mr. Fell pinched the bridge of his nose, under his spectacles. If only his forehead would stop pulsing, he could bloody well get this done, shove Crowley off and collapse into bed.

A hiss of silk, and Crowley peeled herself from the chair. She circled the table, and him, and came up behind his shoulders. 

“Come on,” she goaded. “These are –– what, boots of swiftness? If you could make a pair of magic shoes that could do anything, what would you make?”

Mr. Fell looked down. A distant memory arose in him –– the vague swirling of shadows, the impossible, perfect lightness of music. 

“Dancing,” he said.

“What?”

He stood, and crossed to his enchanting cabinet at the back of the library, explaining as he went. “It’ll take a modified Cat’s Grace spell, a dash of Feather-Fall for lightness on the feet, and a charm to improve the memory.” He plucked a leather bundle from the top shelf, and unrolled it across the desk. It revealed a collection of feathers of every shape and colour, each one labeled with its origin. Eagle, owlbear, axebeak, harpy, raven. A tiny vial of hummingbird tail-feathers. A single white-gold plume from something still unknown. 

“There we are,” he said proudly. “Dancing shoes!”

“You like to dance?” Crowley asked. She sounded genuinely delighted, but her sharp voice and sharp face made her look sarcastic regardless.

“I believe I used to,” Mr. Fell admitted. “I don’t remember the dance well, but the movements are –– are trapped in my body somewhere. I’ve always thought ‘oh, I wish I could remember all the steps. It’s such fun’. So— voila! Shoes to make you dance gracefully, swiftly, and ensure you never forget a step.”

“Master Fell’s Divine Dancing Slippers,” Crowley chuckled.

Emboldened by her laughter, Mr. Fell breathed in, and asked, “Would you like to help me, dear Crowley?”

Her golden eyes shone in the candlelight, bright and eager. It was perhaps the most honest thing about her, how much she genuinely loved magic. Mr. Fell’s heart leapt up into his throat. She nodded, smiling greedily with all her slightly pointed teeth.

To his mute surprise, Crowley followed his lead in the working of the spell, and she was uncharacteristically quiet. They worked together in near-silence. They scraped and picked the old wax from the splintering table and lit the candles to melt anew. They vanished the smears of chalk and ink with waves of their hands. Mr. Fell thought of the intersection of their gestures, the paths they traced through the smoke crossing in the air, and the particles and spaces both their hands had touched. He showed Crowley how to paint the sigils and close the circles that would let the magic ferment, thicken, and sink into the leather sole and tongue and heel. She listened, her sharp features candle-softened. 

He struggled to name the feeling that, like the magic, seemed to be slowly brewing between them; it was when he let her read the first incantation, putting familiar words into a strange voice, that he realized it would be called intimacy.

He wanted to tell her unknowable things; he had the strangest feeling they would mean the most here and now, that their significance would be properly recognized, that they would be safe despite their delicacy. He could not interrupt the flow of the spell, but he could watch her red lips move and pretend she was telling him secrets.

The magic flowed, slow and thick as syrup, into the shoes. Unfortunately, he had miscalculated the strength of such enchantment. Mr. Fell was already weak from the exertions of the night –– perhaps he was only thinking of Crowley like this because he was so –– lightheaded?

And all of a sudden his concentration snapped with a burst of pain through his skull. The flow of magic was ripped from his hands, and he gasped, staggered, and felt the icy pain of an arcane overburn. The leather slippers exploded in a shower of ice crystals, and the candles were snuffed out all at once. In the blackness, Mr. Fell staggered into the table, gasping and fighting for balance.

Quick as a spreading shadow, Crowley had swept around the table and caught him by the shoulders. Her hands were thin, but very strong. Mr. Fell thought he was trapped in a vice –– too small in his own body, and he ached to burst free ––

But the panic faded, and he heard Crowley’s voice somewhere, soft and distant “-alright?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m terribly –– terribly sorry about that.”

Mr. Fell, with Crowley’s gentle guidance, stood upright. He stared unseeing into the near-blackness of the room. His first coherent thought was that the strange burst of ice had managed to extinguish every candle, so thank gods, there was no chance of a fire. An ironic, mirthless laugh escaped his lips.

“What in the Circles was that?” Crowley said.

With a sigh, Mr. Fell pried Crowley’s hands from his shoulders. She hovered nearby, concerned, as he slowly regained his balance and his composure. He straightened his tunic again, dusting off the snow from his misfired spell. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve been a bit ill recently.”

“Let’s call it a night, then,” she soothed. “Make your Divine Dancing Slippers another evening, eh?”

Mr. Fell nodded. He wiped away one of the enchantment sigils with the cuff of his sleeve. The spell collapsed, and the ice vanished. 

Despite Crowley’s dismissal, she hadn’t moved away. And as he muttered, “Thank you, Crowley” –– he made the mistake of looking at her directly, at her golden eyes in the dark. 

Mr. Fell realized, with a calm that felt like drowning, like he was floating away from his own body, that he could kiss her and she would accept it. It was frightfully clear, written in everything from the candle smoke to the lingering silence. Crowley looked at him with gentle, accepting placidity. A touch curious, a touch hopeful. He could do it. He could slip his fingers into her hair and kiss her red mouth, and her eyes might close-

“-I beg your pardon,” he said, and pressed an urgent hand to his forehead. “I think –– I think I should go to sleep.”

She stared at him a moment longer, then took a step back. “Might as well,” she said.

Mr. Fell slinked away to bed, hazy, lost, and so overcome with horror and excitement all at once that he fell asleep as soon as his aching head hit the pillow.

~X~

In his dream, there was a young man in silver armor in a plain white room, a room full of echoing shouts and chaos. He looked small, like a doll. Mr. Fell could have picked him up and held him in his hands, like a little trinket, a curiosity.

There was a dance, a swirling drunken dance in the dark with a man with purple eyes, their shared delight, the gleeful revelation that this was what being human meant –– it meant feeling like  _ this –– _

And there was a green bead of light, small as a coin, that shot through the man and the room and the dance and the music, and turned it all to dust.


	3. Truth

After that night, Mr. Fell’s health grew steadily worse.

He thought something must have opened a crack inside of him –– perhaps Crowley, perhaps the erinyes (still at large) or perhaps his own neglect –– but he felt like parts of him were leaking out. Old memories, terrifying shapeless old memories, that made him do things he did not understand. He still ached all the time, and his head still pounded. He still ate voraciously, which was not helped by how readily Crowley indulged his gluttony (apparently scones baked by a demon were  _ literally _ sinfully delicious).

He grew steadily more and more attached to his possessions. His shop began to feel like less of a shop and more like his –– was there even a word for it? His home. He wanted to fill it with all sorts of treasures and he didn’t want a soul to take a single thing out. He was irate. He couldn’t sleep, and when he did, he suffered tormentous dreams of shadows, mirrors, dancing, dust and light.

Mr. Fell thought he was on the brink of doing something drastic, although he could not possibly say what. He worried the erinyes had cursed him, and that one day he would just –– just burst –– and ––

And what?

Before he could answer that question, business at the shop was interrupted by a significant visitor. Mr. Fell had slept late, at Crowley’s urging, after another bout of dizziness the night before. It hadn’t helped, and he came down the stairs in a wretched mood, only to see a faint purplish light emanating from the front of the shop.

Mr. Fell rushed through the library and out to the front. “Archmage!”

There, by the window, was the Archmage Gabriel in his floor-length lilac robes. He was resplendent, composed, and smiling broadly as always. His sash and cape were enchanted to glow ever so slightly –– he gave an aura of soft colourful light wherever he walked, and in Mr. Fell’s opinion it made him absolutely dashing. Just the sight of him was enough to whip Mr. Fell into shape and at attention. He greeted the Archmage with a quick bow that made his head spin.

“Archmage,” Mr. Fell repeated brightly. “What brings you here?”

“Just a business call, Mr. Fell,” he said, in a jovial tone that made it seem like anything but. Now that Mr. Fell had drawn closer, he realized that the Archmage’s usual easy smile was slightly tense, and that he kept looking out of the corner of his eye. Mr. Fell followed his gaze. 

Ah. Crowley. Crowley was leaning against the window, flanked by his seedlings. He watched Gabriel steadily, unblinking. The young flytraps and tentacled cacti shifted, curling in what appeared to be shared contempt. The plants did not seem so friendly now. Crowley even less so: he held one clawed hand against his cheek, fingernails digging into his skin.

“I see you’ve met my assistant,” Mr. Fell said. He made an imploring smile in Crowley’s direction. “Crowley, this is the Archmage I’ve been telling you about.”

“All good, I hope!” Gabriel threw in, chuckling broadly.

Crowley curled his lip, and gave an overly elaborate bow. “Oh, just  _ enchanted,  _ archmage. Absolutely  _ spellbound,  _ you could say.”

Mr. Fell frowned at him. Crowley unfolded himself and took no notice.

Awkwardly, the Archmage turned back to Mr. Fell. “So!” he said. “Just thought I’d bring you the good word. Those devils you put out the warning on –– they’ve been slain.”

Mr. Fell’s eyes widened. Crowley did a double-take dramatic enough to rustle the plants.

“What do you mean,  _ slain? _ ” Mr. Fell gasped.

“I mean apparently some pack of kids managed to kill the Erinyes at a skyship dock somewhere,” the Archmage shrugged. “Crazy story. Anyway, thought you should know because those kids are gonna be here any minute with all kinds of demon bits––”

“––  _ devils,  _ not demons––” Crowley corrected under his breath.

“–– And, well, I just thought I’d say dibs!” the Archmage finished.

He held out a scroll for Mr. Fell. It was sealed with the sigil of the mage academy. An order for another set of enchantments, likely using said demon bits. 

Mr. Fell’s heart sank. Some vain little part of him had hoped the Archmage was coming around to check on him, but no such luck. Even worse, one of his explanations for his own condition had completely vanished. He twisted the ring on his little finger. Curses died whenever their casters did; if it hadn’t been the erinyes, who was it?

But the Archmage was still talking, and Mr. Fell had to pull his smile back together. “Did you happen to find a buyer for your sentient instrument, by the way?”

“Oh—“ Mr. Fell stammered. He very deliberately did not look at Crowley. “I, er. I did, yes.”

The Archmage snapped his fingers. “Ah, drat. Too bad. Hope it was someone who can handle it responsibly.”

“Absolutely,” Mr. Fell lied. The whole conversation made him queasy. The plants next to Crowley appeared to be growing in a frenzy. Leaves were spreading behind the Archmage: a tendril poked Mr. Fell on the cheek.

“Anyway,” the Archmage said, with a wink and a swish of his glorious cloak, “I’ve got people to see. Let me know when I can expect the order, Mr. Fell.”

He turned, and strode toward the exit. Mr. Fell’s heart began to pound –– the Archmage had only just come by, and his headache was becoming unbearable, and he had so many questions!

Mr. Fell pursued him, and stopped him right before the door. “Archmage, Your Honour,” he said, folding his fretting hands in front of him. “I was wondering if I might - I might ask you something.”

The Archmage stopped. He looked comically surprised, brows lifting to his hairline. “Sure thing. Shoot.”

“It’s just that — I’ve been wondering, recently, if I might be — um, cursed.”

The Archmage gave him a look. Halfway skeptical, halfway confused. “Cursed how?”

“I feel sort of ill,” he explained. Pathetic, he thought immediately. You sound like a child. “Difficulty concentrating. Unseasonable chills, the like.”

“So you’re ill. Close up shop for a week.”

Mr. Fell laced his own fingers together and squeezed them, trying to prevent any dramatic gestures. “If only it were so obvious. I know it sounds mad, but I can just feel it - something is corrupting me. I’ve started remembering things and I don’t know how I learned them, and I’ve forgotten things I should remember. I don’t even know how I came to be here.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like you’re bleeding out of your eyes,” the Archmage chuckled. “If anything’s corrupting you, it’s probably your assistant. Something about that guy just rubs me wrong.”

Mr. Fell took a shuddering breath. He felt horribly cold, raw at the edges and aching in the bones. Cold enough to burn, and to make his eyes water. Perhaps it was the pain slowly growing unbearable — or perhaps Crowley had indeed corrupted him — but he pushed. He had never pushed the Archmage before. “Why don’t I know my own name?” he pleaded. “My own first name. Mr. Fell is just what you call me. It’s what everyone calls me. I know it’s not how things are done, here, not to have a name.”

The Archmage was still smiling, but his eyes became stone. Or perhaps that was Mr. Fell’s perception deceiving him again — his head was pounding so furiously and urgently now that his vision was swimming. The Archmage removed his hand from the doorknob, and drew closer. “You know why you’re getting headaches?” he said.

Mr. Fell took a shaky step back. He had seen the Archmage turn a man to dust. He’d seen him catch bolts of thunder from the sky. The hand he lifted held more power than the little shopkeeper could gather in ten lifetimes. 

The Archmage pressed his thumb to Mr. Fell’s forehead, right between his brows.

“You’re worrying too much,” said he. “It’s amazing what the mind can dupe the body into, eh?”

He removed his thumb. Mr. Fell breathed out.

“If I thought something was wrong with you, Mr. Fell, I’d tell you. We’re friends, right?”

“We are,” Mr. Fell said, straining to smile. He had to close his eyes. Behind them, he still saw the Archmage –– memories of him, all mixed together. Four Archmages, facing different directions but moving in perfect concert. The bright green bead of light he’d produced from his fingertip, and the man turning to dust. Where had he seen-

“Please,” he was saying. “You know you can call me Gabriel.”

“Yes, Gabriel,” he said. “Of course.”

The bell above the door clanged. Mr. Fell put a hand out, and felt the strong rib of a bookcase beside him. Before he could recover enough to stand straight again, or even to slump to the floor, a familiar voice called out from behind. Oh - this was perhaps how he was most comfortable with Crowley, just a voice, just out of sight. Not so overwhelming. Not so much of him, all at once.

“That’s your Archmage?” he complained. “Slimy, lying git. He’d make half the devils in Hell jealous, him. I should tell him they’re recruiting. Why d’you listen to that-”

“Shush, Crowley,” Mr. Fell said, palming at the cold sweat on his forehead. He could almost - almost remember –– under the pounding in his head –– where he had seen it. Where the young man had dissolved before him, and his heart had burned with grief.

“You alright?”

He could hear the footsteps drawing closer, and the susurrus of scales underneath, and yet the voice sounded ever more distant. Mr. Fell dug his fingers into the bookcase. They slipped, and could not find purchase again. He crumpled to the floor, to blackness.

It was glass, he realized. That was how he remembered seeing four Archmages at once. They had been reflections in a sheet of glass. Or, not glass - but ice. Perfect sheets of polished ice, reflecting the Archmage like mirrors. The whole room had been made of ice.

If you were clever about ice, you could make it turn all sorts of colours. He would have explained it all to you, delighted that anyone might take interest. That frothy almost-white ice coating the ground - that was snow, stirred up and re-frozen. If you mixed in certain salts you could make ice turn a pretty turquoise, or faintly lavender. Dyeing the water outright was a bit beneath him, but he wasn’t above mixing in ash or soot. Then it would turn the dull-metal grey of a stormy sea. And if you balanced it all just right, if you understood the sun and the wind and the mountains, you could make the ice warm on the inside. Cozy, he thought with fondness. Like a reading nook.

~X~

Mr. Fell cracked his eyes open. He was looking at the ceiling of his bedroom, at the patterns in the wood grain he’d traced with his eyes each and every night to lull him to sleep. There was a fire in the hearth, casting trembling black shadows on the ceiling-beams.

Mercifully, his head had stopped pounding, and he didn’t feel quite so hot, despite the fire. His thoughts were still a bit muddled, though. It took him a moment of pleasant dizziness to realize he didn’t remember how he’d come to his bed, and that he hadn’t lit any fire. Strange, then, to feel it burning.

He let his head fall to the right. A stunned breath snuck down his throat. Crowley was curled up beside the bed, in his natural form. His snake half was balled up into a heap of black coils. It gleamed richly in the fire. His human half was rather less intimidating, and rather more dear - he’d folded his arms atop his own scales, and put his head down on top of those, like a schoolboy snoozing at his desk.

Crowley was not asleep, though - his eyes were open. At Mr. Fell’s slight movement, he unwound his wiry arms, and pushed himself up. “You’re awake-”

“It’s alright, I’m alright,” Mr. Fell mumbled. He didn’t want to upset Crowley’s evening. He looked very comfortable. He couldn’t articulate the desire, though - something told him “I want you to sleep in front of me” wasn’t exactly what he was going for.

“You little moron,” the lamia scolded. “I didn’t have a single idea what to do, you know. Do all humans keel over like that, when someone’s cruel enough?”

“Cruel?”

“Yes, moron, cruel,” Crowley said impatiently. “Archmage Whats-his-Tits was being cruel. Manipulative, too. If I know two things they’re cruel and manipulative.”

“Stop calling me a moron,” Mr. Fell snapped.

He’d wanted a little sparring match. A friendly squabble. Something to remind him that everything was normal, and things could continue as they were. Instead, his voice came out too plaintive, and he swallowed thickly before he could correct himself. He turned back to the ceiling, and shut his eyes.

There was a heavy thump. A familiar, pleasant hiss of scales on stone. The mattress dipped next to his elbow, and Mr. Fell glanced down to see Crowley there, his arms folded up like a makeshift pillow again, only now the demon was looking him straight in the face with a regretful twist in his expression.

“Sorry,” he said. Hesitant, as if the word was unfamiliar to him. The  _ s _ of sorry was one long, dragging hiss.

Mr. Fell stared, speechless.

With an awkward laugh, the lamia added, “Usually if things don’t go how you like in the Abyss, you’ve just got to yell and stab until they do, you know. You’re not a moron. Furthest thing from.”

Tears started to burn behind Mr. Fell’s eyes. His heart throbbed. He felt his fingers twist in the sheets.

“Are you going to cry?” Crowley said. He sounded genuinely curious.

“You should go,” Mr. Fell said. “I don’t want-”

“I don’t mind if you do,” the demon insisted. A short hissing sound, as some of his coils drew hesitantly closer. “Won’t say anything about it, I swear.”

Mr. Fell considered. With his mouth sealed shut, he nodded. He blinked a few times, letting the tears escape, and then screwed his eyes closed once more. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said. “I think I might be cursed.”

“I heard you telling that Archmage,” Crowley said.

“Yes. If it is a curse, it’s one beyond me,” Mr. Fell admitted, with a tragic laugh. “I’ve tried a few-” he waved a hand above his own head, mimicking the rituals. “A few diagnostics and dispellings. Nothing.”

He felt a little dab of pressure on his cheek, and turned just in time to see Crowley lick the teardrop from the tip of his finger, his eyes drifting skyward as he contemplated the flavour. The demon froze, caught. “Tastes like suffering,” he said. “It’s sweet. Sorry.”

Perhaps Mr. Fell should have been offended, but a dry, wretched amusement overcame him instead. “I suppose one of us should get some delight out of this,” he said.

“I’ll stop.”

“No, no, do feel free,” Mr. Fell sighed, and shut his eyes.

“I am trying to help,” the demon pointed out. Another gentle touch stole a tear from Mr. Fell’s cheek. Oh, was he simply permitting this because it resembled comfort? He was truly breaking new ground in patheticness. 

And yet — and yet it did still feel comforting. Little touch after little touch, each one soft and precise, across his cheeks and temples where the tears had spilled. Like he was being slowly, meticulously corrected.

As he lay there, and Crowley worked in silence, his own knot of feelings began to unravel, ever so slowly. He picked at the threads, while his tears worked their way out of him. It didn’t really matter what Crowley was doing. He could have been doing something properly comforting — holding his hand or petting his hair — or he could be plucking the tears from his face for a midnight snack. It was simply better to be in his presence. Safer, somehow, than being alone. 

He thought, at first, that Crowley and Gabriel had inspired the same feeling in him. A little spike of anxiousness, a flush of admiration, a desire to fascinate and impress. Sometime in the throes of illness, the feelings had become two different animals — or perhaps they always had been. He was petrified of disappointing the Archmage, or embarrassing himself before him; and yet here he was, a shivering, teary-eyed wreck, and only feeling better to know Crowley was nearby. 

“There’s something more,” he said at last.

A rustle of sheets. “Do tell.”

“I haven’t spoken of this before,” Mr. Fell warned. “To anyone.”

Another rustle. Crowley made no sniping comebacks, so Mr. Fell was satisfied that he understood the gravity of the moment.

“I feel…” he began, and then pressed a hand flat to his forehead. “It’s hard to describe. It’s like I don’t fit inside my own skin.” he finished. “I’m not — properly connected to any of it. My hands, my face, my body — I see them in the mirror and it’s as if I’m detached from them. Like I’m pulling a string, and somewhere else, somewhere distant, this other creature’s hand is moving. It’s not my hand. It belongs to a — a loathsome stranger.” He sighed, frustrated. It sounded like such nonsense. “I want — I want to be something else.”

He let the plea fade into silence. The silence lasted long enough that he realized it was not silence at all. There was the crackling fire, his teary breaths, and even, beneath that, the faint thud of Crowley’s heartbeat against the mattress, slightly off-beat from his own.

“Could be that you are,” Crowley said.

Mr. Fell smiled wearily.

“I’m just saying, I know the feeling, or something like it. I was a wrench for a bit.”

That pulled another miserable laugh from him. “You were trapped in a wrench. It’s not the same. I’ve always been human.”

“And who told you that?” Crowley said carefully. “You’ve lost your memory.”

Mr. Fell pressed his other hand to his forehead, to join the first. Crowley went on:

“I told you, once, that I can sense how you’ve got this big cold space about you? You’ve still got that, you know. Maybe that’s a sign of what you should be.”

Still, Mr. Fell said nothing. He screwed his eyes shut tighter.

Crowley was not a moron, either. It took him only a few more seconds to put it all together. “You’ve figured all that out already.”

“I’ve been avoiding it,” Mr. Fell confessed. “I think — I think it was Gabriel.”

“You _ what _ ?”

“I think it was the Archmage, I think he changed me,” he continued, in a painful rush. “Because I think I was something awful before, and he made me good. If I was something wretched, if I’ve done something terrible, I don’t want to know.”

Crowley made a frustrated noise, and pushed himself up. He sat on the edge of the bed, his coils twisting. “You think, what, you won’t be able to forgive yourself? Or that you’ll just be a monster again, like all this life you’ve lived since doesn’t matter?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know, but I couldn’t risk that, could I?” Mr. Fell pushed himself to a slouch against the headboard, scrubbing at his eyes.

“Well, I’ll tell you this much,” Crowley huffed. “If you were all bastard, down to the core of you, down to your soul, you wouldn’t have acted kind when you started from scratch. You’d never have let me out.”

Mr. Fell opened his mouth, and then snapped it shut. He looked down at the sheets. He realized, with that same bemused distance, that Crowley hadn’t pulled the blanket over him or tucked him in at all. Maybe they didn’t have duvets in the Abyss.

“I’m quite glad I did,” he said.

Crowley sighed. “See that, there, making me feel all appreciated. You don’t have to do that either.”

Mr. Fell laughed helplessly. 

“You’re soft!” Crowley pressed, “soft as a biscuit all the way down.” He poked the shopkeeper in the stomach, and shook his head, pretending to disapprove. Making theatre of their misery again. It launched Mr. Fell into a cascade of teary giggles, until he was hiccuping and stuttering to catch his breath.

At last, he sighed, and looked back up. Crowley was seated on the side of the bed, facing outward. His profile was sharp and magnificent, carved out of the firelight like that. There was a faint black tattoo printed next to his ear, one Mr. Fell had never been close enough to study before. It was, of course, a snake.

“You’re proof enough, aren’t you?” Mr. Fell said, with something like wonder. “That we can still be kind, no matter what we are.”

Crowley turned to him, golden eyes glittering. Normally, when Crowley held him in that yellow-eyed gaze, he felt a bit intimidated. Something had given him confidence tonight; perhaps he had stumbled past caring for his dignity, or perhaps Crowley did make him feel that comfortable. “It was kind of you to stay and watch over me. Very kind, for a demon.”

“Yes, well,” Crowley answered, with a proper scowl. “If you’d gone completely mental I’d be out of house and home.”

The complaint was standard. Instead, Mr. Fell blushed at the thought that Crowley considered this place home. 

Crowley turned, curling toward him. He rubbed another tear from Mr. Fell’s cheek, and licked it from the pad of his thumb. He frowned a little. “Blech. When did you start feeling better?”

Mr. Fell nearly apologized, but a shiver descended on him, sudden and sharp, and he made a miserable noise through his parted lips instead. Cold again. The fire seemed distant. His shoulders, goodness, so stiff and tight it was like they were turning to stone. He registered Crowley’s hands, fussing him down to the mattress and under the blankets, and nudging him closer to the fire. Mr. Fell brought his knees up to his stomach. The sheets had trapped a little chill between them, but they would warm. He could stay here, eyes shut, until then.

Over the roar of his trembling, shivering, disobedient body, he felt the bed below his feet dip with new weight, and the weight curling behind his back, up, up, until he realized Crowley was lying beside him, on the side opposite the fire, above the sheets. Mr. Fell couldn’t open his eyes. It would surely make the pain sharper, and make Crowley vanish. It would make everything real.

“I’ll keep watch,” he said. “If you like.”

Mr. Fell nodded. Still balled up, he rolled toward Crowley, and pulled the blankets high over his nose and mouth. The pain sank through him, like his blood and aching innards had all settled and pooled with gravity. He wanted it out. Over.

In a few agonizing moments, he felt the slightest touch against his temple. Crowley’s fingertips. They trailed down his cheek, around his ear, over the curve of his shoulder. The touch was unsentimental, exacting. He was not being comforted (he wasn’t sure Crowley even knew he was awake); he was being memorized. Measured.

When he awoke, it was morning, before dawn. He felt as if he’d been sleeping for years. Crowley was gone. Mr. Fell was disappointed at first, until he felt something in his hand. Practically weightless, like a feather, and a little ticklish. He uncurled his fingers, and there, in his palm, was a perfect lock of curled red hair, tied with a narrow ribbon. He recognized the colour, the texture, immediately - he had been surrounded by it just the night before.  Mr. Fell sat up, eyes open wide with wonder, stroking the hair with the pad of his thumb.

It was not the romance of the gesture that bowled him over; it was the trust. Locks of hair could concentrate all kinds of malefic magic. Curses, scrying, tracking, targeted hallucinations. Crowley had left himself completely vulnerable.

And yet, they were also a promise of sorts - the best way to find someone who was lost, wherever they might be.

Mystified, the enchanter took the lock between his fingers. He tugged on both ends of the ribbon, making sure it was tied tight. He descended into the library, but when he opened his enchanter’s cabinet, no place seemed right for something so precious. Instead, he took one of the smallest leather pouches he had and secured it with string, and slipped the lock of hair inside. He draped it around his neck, and tucked it under his clothes.

Crowley had transformed back, and was pacing around the store, idly rearranging things with no real purpose or intent. At the sound of Mr. Fell’s footsteps, he looked up –– and his eyes, in the gray morning, were still stunningly bright.

“Uh, hey,” he said, and swallowed. “You feeling better?”

“I think so,” Mr. Fell said.

He paused. He heard Crowley’s feet shift, and the secret hissing of scales beneath the movement. Mr. Fell placed his hand over the leatherbound lock of hair. “No,” he said instead. “No, I’m not.”

Crowley nodded. A muscle was twitching in his jaw. Mr. Fell knew he wanted to say something, but he was resisting. Curious –– at this point, it seemed like Crowley could have very little to hide from him.

“I have an idea,” Mr. Fell said cautiously. “I think I know what to do, but I may need your help.”

The demon looked up warily. He must have heard the trembling in Mr. Fell’s voice.

The storeowner breathed in, and twisted his fingers together in front of his tunic. “Alright,” he said. “Tonight, after we close the store, we’re going out to the mountains.”

Crowley’s brow furrowed. “For a hike?”

“No,” Mr. Fell said firmly. “To be away from anyone else.”

At that, Crowley’s brow moved very swiftly in the opposite direction, and Mr. Fell lifted his hands in a panic. “Oh, good heavens, not –– not like that!” he gave a shrill laugh, and Crowley smiled back, amused and perplexed. “No, no,” he said. “What I mean is –– I’m trying to do this as safely as possible. Once we’re there, I ––” he breathed in, and lifted his hand. “I’m going to take the ring off, and find out what it’s hiding from me.”

Crowley’s yellow eyes flickered to the golden ring, and then back to Mr. Fell. His mouth closed into a tight line. Gods above and below, he was so expressive, and Mr. Fell would have taken his face in his hands and begged him not to be upset, were it not for what he had to say next.

“Crowley,” he said gravely, “If I’m some mindless monster, some unstoppable thing –– either you need to talk me into putting the ring back on, or you’ll have to slay me.”

~X~

And after that, it was business as usual until the closing of the shop. Strange, that such a momentous occasion could be preceded by nothing more than typical rituals –– and yet it was fitting. Mr. Fell spent much of the morning sighing, touching old books he particularly liked and appreciating each comfy chair in the back room. Crowley spent most of the morning doing all the work, which thankfully was very little. Adam did come by to drop off the promised bag of erinyes-bits, which occupied Mr. Fell for a while (he wrote meticulous instructions for Crowley on how to perform the enchantments the Archmage had requested), but that was the one intriguing ripple in an otherwise quiet day.

Somehow, that was fitting. It let Mr. Fell think, and by the time they left the town and took the path up to the mountainside, he was quite sure of everything he had to do. The lock of Crowley’s hair, in its leather pouch, had started to feel natural. He liked the comforting weight of it around his neck, be it ever so slight.

They left at sunset’s last blush over the sea, when the light was gold and red and the world was at its prettiest, but the walk was long and steep. Crowley complained most of the way, and Mr. Fell took them down the wrong trail for a minute or two, and by the time they arrived where Mr. Fell had planned, it was dark. It was a simple locale for the ritual: a clearing on the forested mountainside, a dramatically sloped field of thick green grass and sparse flowers, ringed by tall, dark trees.

In near-silence, Mr. Fell led them to the middle of the field, and stopped.

“Alright,” Crowley said, after an audible breath out. “I’ll stand ten feet back, shall I? Fifteen? How far d’you think is safe? I guess it doesn’t really––”

“Wait.”

Crowley shut up. 

The distance between them was too much for what the moment demanded. Five feet seemed leagues away. Instead, Mr. Fell took a step closer to the demon, so he was close enough to touch, and so the temptation to touch was almost overpowering. Crowley had to tilt his head ever so slightly down so their eyes could meet.

Mr. Fell licked his lips. His heart was thundering so loud he could barely hear it. “I might be very different, once this is over. I should say-”

The demon hushed him. He captured Mr. Fell’s hand in both of his, his long fingers closing like petals, above and below. “Not now.”

“Crowley-”

“You’ll be fine. Tell me when we’re done.”

“It might change what I have to say. You do understand that?”

“If it does, it can’t have been that important, right?”

“But…” he wanted to argue, scandalized at the implication, until he realized Crowley was right. If his adoration did not survive whatever he was about to learn, then perhaps it was not part of who he was, after all.

He did not think that was so. 

Crowley laughed dryly, startling Mr. Fell out of his thoughts. “If you do say something now and then this –– this turns you into an aardvark or something –– I don’t know if I could take it.”

Crowley’s hands tightened, his long, clawlike nails digging into his own skin. Mr. Fell’s resolve nearly broke. All he wanted to do was haul Crowley into his arms, fall back onto the cool, moonlit grass, and ask that they forget the whole idea. It was silly, anyway, when there was so little to be gained and plenty to be lost. They could just lie there together instead, all tangled up, and he could finally sink both his hands into Crowley’s hair. 

No, it was not to be. At this rate, the maddening lie might kill him.

“Right,” Mr. Fell said. “Quickly, then.”

The demon nodded, and released a slow, deep breath to gather himself. He opened his hands, leaving Mr. Fell’s hovering in the middle. His fingers twirled into the gestures of the spell, and he spoke a long, roiling, grating phrase in Abyssal. It sounded like the slow opening of a rusted gate. Magic gathered between his fingers. Mr. Fell watched the demon’s face. Crowley’s eyebrows jumped, and he tilted his head, almost impressed; a concession to the strength of the ring’s enchantment. Then, with a great burst of effort, he redoubled the energy in his own magic, and a searing power flashed through Mr. Fell’s hand. The ring glowed burning hot, and then shattered.

He - he bloomed, from the inside, like a flower, like a detonation, full of a potential he had long forgotten. The memories returned in a rush, hundreds and hundreds of years of them. And with them, the primal, embodied, exhilarating difference. Scales. Talons. Teeth. The sensation of wind lifting him, the clouds obeying his voice, the delicate promise of winter frost coating his throat.

Mr. Fell remembered what he was. He sank to his knees and collapsed, as he had hoped, into the cool grass.

~X~

_ First—  _

There were twelve bodies strewn across the floor of the dragon’s lair. Charred husks, burnt beyond recognition. Nothing left but charcoal bones and black particulates. One young man, a knight in silver armour, had been reduced completely to dust.

Terrible shame. And he’d have to throw out the carpets.

The dragon himself was wounded. One wing shorn through, to keep him grounded. A few great gouges made by an enchanted axe. He pressed his mangled side to the wall of the cavern, letting the ice cool his blazing wounds. He would not die from this, but it had been close. The humans surely would have killed him, if they had not suffered a betrayal from within their ranks.

At the mouth of the cave stood a pale-robed wizard. He was untouched, unhurt, and only slightly burnt at the edges. He brushed ash from his sleeves.

“Did you need to kill them all?” the dragon asked him.

“Nothing else would have stopped them. That’s fanatics for you.”

“What did I do to make them so angry?”

The wizard smiled. It was half apology, half pity. “Don’t take it personally. Their city was razed to the ground by dragons a few years ago. Once they heard you could disguise yourself to look like a human? Man. No stopping them, then.”

The dragon looked mournfully down at the bodies, at his blood on their weapons. “And now this. Dear, oh dear. I should lair elsewhere.”

“Nah, come on,” said the wizard. “It must take ages to move all your books and gold and everything. Don’t give up like that.”

The dragon had spent a few months making the cavern nice and homey, sculpting clouds and moving treasures and carving ice. It did seem like a lot of effort gone to waste. 

“What would you suggest?” the dragon said.

The Archmage propped his hands on his hips. “Well,” he said. “It just so happens I’m working on a project, and I think you’re exactly what I need.”

_ Then—  _

The dragon, disguised as a man, sat at the white wood desk. He faced a half-circle of Archmages. They wore Gabriel’s colours - pale blue, lavender. They took obsessive notes, fidgeted with the instruments on the table, and looked perpetually harried.

They placed golden shackles on the dragon’s human-shaped wrists, reassuring him that the restraints were absolutely necessary for their research. The dragon approved of their caution. Gold enchanted well. Soaked up magic like a sponge cake soaked up syrup. He did not recognize the spell itself, from what was carved into the cuffs, but if this was as cutting-edge as promised, it was likely something bespoke.

He sat behind the white wood desk, with his shackles on, and he talked. He told them everything he could remember about enchantment, magic, transfigurations and shapeshifting. He told them of kings he had befriended centuries ago, and the artefacts he had crafted for them. The Archmages listened, took notes, and measured. The low hum of enchantments at work buzzed under their conversations.

Then, he would join the Archmages for a gander about the city, typically around sunset. Taverns, gardens, music. The colour and confusion was overwhelming - but he was fond of those nights, and enjoyed them in the way one enjoys whiskey or dancing: in short, overstimulating bursts.

It baffled him, that humanity should fear him. They had such ingenuity, such ambition, and such anger. Those were far more unsettling, he thought, than his placid curiosity.

But for their sake, he practiced not being terrifying. He listened more than he spoke. He learned the humans’ minds. His real name was too archaic, too intimidating: he asked the Archmages to call him Mr. Fell.

_ Then—  _

The dragon frowned. “I have a book just like that.”

The assistant froze, her fingers hovering above the paper. The other archmages stared at her. She opened her mouth; Gabriel cut her off.

“Uh oh! Caught us. Way to ruin the surprise,” he said, chuckling. “We took the liberty of moving a few of your books down from the mountain. I thought that might make the place feel like home, since you’re going to be stuck here for a few months.”

The dragon brightened. “Oh. That’s very thoughtful of you.” He turned to the assistant, and gave her an apologetic smile. “You are welcome to look through my books, but please, do be careful with them,” he admonished. “Some of them are hundreds of years old, you know.”

“Yes,” Gabriel cut in. “Absolutely. We must respect our guest’s wishes. Sandy, will you go make sure his books are taken care of?”

She bowed, and scurried away. The dragon wanted to follow, just to ensure everything was in order - but they were in the middle of their work, and he was still bound to the table.

When he returned to his room that night, there were twenty-four books lined up on his shelf. He touched their spines and did not feel relieved.

_ Then—  _

“The shackles are for your own safety,” said the Archmage. “I’ve already explained what they do.”

“Are you absolutely certain?” the dragon said. He was standing with his arms folded, dancing on the border of something like anger. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were making it worse! The longer I wear them, the more I-”

He fell silent. He did not want to admit to something that might have been his own failure, rather than the Archmage’s.

“Trust me. If you didn’t have them on, it would be a whole lot worse.”

The dragon took a patient breath. “You saved my life. I don’t want to disappoint you. But I must insist you look at these again. Revise the enchantment. Or explain its purpose to me, and let me help. I can’t decipher it.”

The Archmage reached over the desk and patted his hand. The dragon let his shoulders loosen. Gabriel had such a handsome, convincing smile. A warm, sweet presence that coated your senses like honey, made you sluggish, accepting, comfortable, drunk. “Tell you what,” Gabriel said. “We’ll compile what we have. Take the week off, relax. I’ll see if I can whip something up to counteract the headaches in the meantime.”

“Oh - would you really?” the dragon said, blushing. He hadn’t expected his challenge to go quite so well. He tore his hands from the table, away from Gabriel, because the prospect of so much comfort at once was strange to him. It felt undeserved, and overwhelming. He folded his hands behind his back. “It seems like quite a lot to ask.”

“Not at all,” the Archmage said. “It’s for the greater good.”

_ Then—  _

“Gabriel-”

The dragon flung the door to his quarters wide, and then half-closed it behind him, self-conscious. “It’s late,” he stammered. “What are you doing here? You look tired.”

“I’ve been working hard,” he said, with a slightly wilted wink.

“Is something wrong?” He was careful not to fidget from foot to foot. He still found it awkward sometimes, balancing on just the two legs.

A belaboured sigh from the Archmage. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but the data we got from you-” he tilted his head back and forth, toying with the appropriate phrasing.

He arrived at, “it’s useless.”

“Oh dear,” said the dragon. His heart plummeted, and guilt chained it down in its pit. “I’m so sorry.”

“It happens.”

“Is that because of something I did?”

“Could be.”

The dragon, crestfallen, looked at the floor, but the Archmage waved his hand to dismiss the topic. “Anyway, point is, I made the thing I promised you. It’ll get rid of your headaches from the shackles.”

With a clever bit of sleight-of-hand, the Archmage produced a little gold ring in the cradle of his palm. The runes engraved on it were miniscule, but precise. The band had been carefully carved into the shape of two interlocking wings.

“Dragons like gold, right?”

This particular dragon preferred silver, but more than anything he preferred gifts from people he admired. “It’s lovely,” he gasped.

“Try it on.”

He took the ring carefully from Gabriel’s palm, and slipped it on to his small finger. It adjusted itself for a moment, stretching and contracting, the way enchanted items did when they met their new bearer.

Gabriel held out his hand, as if he wanted the dragon to shake it. Deal complete. Job well done.

Mr. Fell took his hand. A chill passed through the ring, into his nerves, and shot up to his brain. It darted down to his lungs, and spread through his limbs. The little star of cold left flesh and blood completely numb in its wake. 

Archmage Gabriel’s eyes were solemn, and without affection.

“Make yourself useful this time.”

The dragon felt light-headed. The hallway pitched like a ship in a storm, and he tumbled to the floor.

_ A long, draining darkness, and then—  _

“Mr. Fell?” he asked, blinking. “Is that my name?”

“Yes,” the stranger said gravely, with slow, rhythmic nods. “You were almost hysterical when we found you, but that much we could make out.”

“I see,” said the patient - the patient named ‘Mr. Fell’, apparently, not that he could recall that. He stared down at his hands, and his eyes brightened with curiosity at the ring on his smallest finger. “Could this-”

“No, no no, don’t touch that-” said the stranger, his voice halfway to panic. Mr. Fell stopped, waiting for an explanation.

“It’s enchanted. We had to put that on just to stabilize you. Don’t take it off.”

They stared at each other. The stranger was dressed in mage’s robes, delicately patterned in lavender and pale blue. He looked wealthy, or important, or both. Mr. Fell was touched that someone of import had helped him. “Well, you know my name,” he said, smiling with a wan attempt at courage. “What shall I call you?”

"My official title," the man said, somewhat sarcastically, "would be 'Archmage'."

_ And then, finally—  _

Gabriel and Mr. Fell stood in the front room of the store, surrounded by tall wooden crates and half-assembled furniture. In contemplative silence, they watched golden dust drift down past the windows. 

“You think you can handle this one on your own?”

Mr. Fell nodded, his mouth set in a serious line. “I won’t let you down.”

“Sure thing,” the Archmage said, slipping his hands into his pockets.

“I will not,” Mr. Fell insisted. “This is a considerable show of trust on your part.”

He rounded on Archmage Gabriel, the man who had saved him, and folded his hands proudly behind his back. “Anything you want from me, it’s yours. Free of charge.”

“Well, now, that’s an offer too good to refuse,” the Archmage said, wiggling his brows. “Don’t worry for your conscience. Think of it like a loan. Once your shop starts making money, you’ll just pay me back.”

Mr. Fell squeezed his own hands tighter. The gold ring did not even twist with the motion, so closely and keenly did it fit. “You’re making quite an investment in me.”

“Well, it might have been a sizable expense, once upon a time,” the Archmage said, with a conspiring wink, “but as luck would have it, I just came into quite a bit of money.”

And then, after a hundred moments more, Crowley looked down on him from his place in the stars. Those beautiful twin-moon eyes shone wet with tears. The moment Mr. Fell recognized what he was looking at, Crowley half-collapsed with the force of his sigh. “Oh, thank the dark lords, I thought you-”

Mr. Fell sat bolt upright. Crowley had to dodge away to avoid the headbutt. 

“That absolute lying fuck!” he shrieked.

Crowley stared at him, and sniffed. “What?”

Mr. Fell heaved a shaking breath in, and reoriented himself. He was not in the stars. He was on the mountainside. He’d been cheated. “Gabriel!” he yelled. “Lying! The whole time! Just distracting me so he could clean out my hoard and - and he took all my books!”

His voice had grown so shrill that a small flock of birds scattered from a nearby tree. Mr. Fell grasped Crowley’s shoulders. Somebody needed to understand the gravity of all of this.

“I’m such a fool!” he gasped. “I’ve been ruined by him twice over, and you - the moment you saw him you knew he was a liar, and he just - he completely - I’m so stupid!”

“Slow down,” Crowley interrupted. He smudged his tears away, gathering his breath.

“But you,” Mr. Fell said, squeezing the velvet under his palms. “You figured him out on the spot, Crowley.”

His mouth snapped shut. Crowley was protesting — he was a bastard himself, so of course he could spot a bastard at a hundred paces - but Mr. Fell did not register the meaning of it. He could not be bothered. 

Centuries of memories changed everything and nothing, all at once. Crowley was still Crowley, an awkward pile of angular limbs, a demon with a heart so big all the scowls and black cloaks and sarcasm in the world couldn’t hope to mask it. Still staring, golden-eyed, with an expression between heartbreak and fear. And yet Mr. Fell knew more, and because he knew more, he knew more of Crowley. He could put the lonely lamia into context, like finding the gap in the shelf where a book always belonged. He knew the Abyss, and demons, and how impossible it was that Crowley had somehow learned to be kind. He remembered centuries of his own loneliness and fleeting mortal loves, how he ached for clever company, filled with a hunger so intense he would suffer heartbreak, deception, betrayal and the death of those he loved, again, and again, and again. He recognized the hope on Crowley’s face — and he knew what it meant to be looked at in the way Crowley looked at him now. 

He took a red curl of Crowley’s hair between his fingers. “Oh,” he breathed.

Crowley hiccuped. He had pressed the heel of his hand to his mouth. There were no tears on his cheeks, but his eyes still shone with them.

“I remember,” Mr. Fell whispered. “Thank goodness. I remember.”

He pulled the demon close. Crowley, staggered, off-balance, wrapped one clumsy arm around his back and held on. Mr. Fell smiled, almost gasping, when he felt Crowley press his mouth and nose to the curve of his neck. It was not quite a kiss: it was like he wanted to be buried there.

“I’m alright,” he whispered, half in comfort, half in awe.

Crowley didn’t say anything. He nodded roughly against Mr. Fell’s neck.

“Crowley?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice worn and rasping.

“Thank you.” He stroked the demon’s hair, his narrow shoulders.

“Sure,” Crowley huffed. 

“You were right. This isn’t my body. It isn’t my name.”

He pulled them apart, gently, just a hairsbreadth, so he could look the demon in the eye. Mr. Fell slid his hands down over Crowley’s shoulders, and cradled his cheeks. His senses were blazing, bright as they always should have been, and in this new awareness Crowley was an ecstasy of sensation. He smelled of sulphur and wormwood and ash, and beneath that, of hot blood. His eyes, wide with rapture — no jewel had ever been so intriguing. What precious things they were, light as topaz, veined in gold. The demon’s breath brushed his mouth, hot and damp and delightful.

He touched Crowley’s lips with his fingers, then the pad of his thumb. Goodness, the texture, the give and smoothness — he could touch him for hours. Every sensation was vivid enough to blind him.

“I’d like you to say it,” he breathed. Yes, that sounded wonderful. His name in Crowley’s purring, drawling, sauntering voice.

“Your name?” Crowley asked, against his thumb.

Their telepathic connection had ended days ago. But creating such a connection meant carving a path that would not be overgrown so swiftly. Mr. Fell knew the brush of Crowley’s mind against his, and into that he poured his name — an elated declaration, all the sounds and all their meanings, so bright and stunning that Crowley knew it unmistakably.

“Aziraphale,” he said.

Yes. That was him: the dragon Aziraphale.

He wriggled with shameless delight. It was more beautiful from Crowley’s mouth than he could have ever hoped. His not-quite-right accent made Aziraphale sound lax, low, not half so pompous — to say nothing of the awe with which the name was spoken. He kissed him — deep, forceful, and grateful. “Again, please, please,” he said, against Crowley’s lips, and against his own he felt him whisper  _ Aziraphale _ . He felt as if he were about to burst out of his skin with joy. And goodness, if he’d thought the sight of Crowley’s eyes was an intriguing new experience, then kissing was an utter revelation! So sweet yet so destructive, like the whole world around them had been obliterated, and all he could feel was the tentative brush of Crowley’s hand in his hair and the warm, desperate press of lips against his own.

But that was not enough –– the truth was still trapped inside him somewhat, and it ached to be freed.

“Mind yourself, now,” he said, pushing Crowley over (a touch more forcefully than he had meant, in his excitement). The demon’s eyes were wide. He looked gobsmacked. It only made Aziraphale’s smile broader.

He stood.

Wings burst from his back. His scales slipped free of the confining human skin. His bones shifted under his flesh. His muscles burned with the relief of a difficult task over and done with. Every particle of him had been bearing too much, carrying the vastness of his true form, and now they were relieved of the burden. He felt light as the wind.

Aziraphale stretched his wings out to their taloned tips. He pushed back onto his rear legs, reaching his forepaws out like a cat’s. His tail whipped upwards with the motion, cracking loud against the displaced air. He yawned, and felt each of his sword-length teeth, comfortable and set strong in his jaws. Everything inside him was perfectly aligned once more, and with a delighted shiver, he relaxed.

Blinking contentedly, he looked down at Crowley. The demon was staring up at him open-mouthed, hands loose at his sides. Aziraphale felt a giggle rumble up from his chest. It escaped him with a puff of frost-laced air.

“You’re so little, dearest,” he tittered. “Look at you.”

Crowley snapped his mouth shut and recoiled, offended. “I’m not little, you’re just huge, you great lizard!”

“I’m not a lizard,” Aziraphale purred. “I’m a dragon.”

“That’s just a fancy old lizard!” Crowley shouted up at him, both hands cupped around his mouth.

Aziraphale let his head drop down to the grass, next to Crowley. He thudded down so hard he felt his jaw leave a furrow in the mud. Easy to misjudge how heavy you were, when your size had so suddenly multiplied. He also found it a titch more difficult to pout with a dragon’s mouth, but he tried.

“Crowley,” he said. He thumped his tail into the grass for good measure. It was a bit like stamping his foot. “You must at the very least admit that I am the fanciest lizard you’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“You’re––” Crowley was grinning widely, all teeth. He seemed to be trying for a joke, but what stumbled out of his mouth was “-utterly, utterly magnificent.”

“Why, thank you,” Aziraphale preened. “Come closer, if you like.”

Crowley drew closer, a curious hand outstretched. Aziraphale lay there obediently, and waited for the touch. It felt a bit like a bug had landed on him. Next-to-weightless, and very ticklish, resting right on the scruff of his neck. He tried not to snicker again. Crowley’s hand trailed up his neck to the crest of frilled spines at the base of his skull, and then around to one of the spiraling horns at his temples. Ooh - right at that juncture, right where the base of the horn met his scales - he couldn’t hold his laughter in any longer. He flinched, and wriggled from his shoulders down to the tip of his tail. Crowley pulled his hand away.

“No? Not there?” Crowley was asking.

Goodness, since when were demons so bashful and wary? “Ticklish, dear boy,” he said, and nudged Crowley with the side of his nose. He was very careful not to knock him sprawling. “If you’re going to fondle me then put your back into it.”

The order pulled a sputtering laugh from Crowley, who was also regaining his balance. He set his hands on Aziraphale’s brow more confidently, tracing the ridges of bone and scale to his satisfaction. “Magnificent,” he said again. “Look at that.”

Aziraphale delighted in being fawned over. He always had. Oh, look at that, indeed — he remembered who he was, who he had always been, the pieces of him that were true and unbreakable, and his great heart twisted. “Do you have any idea what you’ve given me, Crowley?” he said. Dragons couldn’t cry, but they could certainly feel the same teary tightness in their chests, that same wound-up emotion fit to burst.

Crowley stepped back, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He was about to deflect and demure, as he always did, and his mouth was halfway into a careless don’t-worry-about-it when Aziraphale slammed his tail into the ground again, and snapped, “It is not the moment for your self-effacement!”

It was a bit louder than he’d meant — Crowley jumped. Aziraphale immediately felt terrible. He lifted his head from the ground, looking down at Crowley. He spoke gently. “I — I can hardly describe it. You’ve remade me. As good as bringing the dead to life. Thank you, dearest. Thank you.”

Crowley stood stock-still. Then he folded and arm across his chest and slowly, awkwardly bowed.

“Oh, get up, you ninny,” Aziraphale chuckled.

The demon obeyed, his face scarlet. “Well, I don’t know, you’re all big and scaly and talking with the wisdom of ages all of a sudden, you want me to just —”

“Yes,” the dragon said. “I do!”

He’d been too loud again. He would absolutely have to practice that. Crowley looked like he’d been physically knocked back by the volume. Aziraphale sighed, and settled back on the ground. “I mean, that is-” he flexed his claws in the hard earth, uprooting clumps of grass. “I feel the same as I did before. For you. I still—”

Goodness, he’d kissed him already, and now he was forty feet tall, and he was still scared of a little bundle of words. They held meaning so much bigger than themselves. They were impossible.

Crowley looked up at him wistfully. “It’s alright, biscuit.”

The demon was smiling. Oh, he was handsome. Crowley shrugged, and looked down at the grass. “You’re just going to have to give me a bit. It’s one thing to know you’re this — spectacular, magnificent — thing — but how you feel about — about me, that’s another thing entirely. To wrap my head around. A whole other—”

He trailed off, and shook his head. “Just give me a bit.”

Silence reigned between them. Aziraphale breathed across the grass and watched it stir. A ‘bit’ would prove to be a very long time.

When Crowley broke the silence, his face was grave. “What are we going to do, then? About Gabriel?”

Aziraphale sighed. The grass in front of him shivered, and developed a faint coating of frost.

“If you’re open to it,” Crowley continued, his voice careful and quiet, “I’ve got a few ideas.”

Ah, bless him. Of course the demon of deception would have a plan. “I shall defer to your expertise,” he rumbled, and folded his great claws over each other in the grass. He lifted his head, so he could look Crowley in the eyes. “Let us send a snake to catch a snake.”

~~X~~

  
  


When the Archmage awoke, he could not move. His limbs were numb and faintly tingling, like they’d fallen asleep. His tongue lay limp and flat in his mouth, dangerously close to gagging him. He could not speak, he could not squirm, and he could not punch the creature above him in the face.

“Hello,” it said, smiling hungrily. Two bright fangs caught the moonlight.

Fuck. Aziraphale’s weird demonic assistant. He knew he should have-

“I like you so much better when you’ve shut your mouth,” the demon purred. He tapped a glass bottle against the Archangel’s lips.

A pale blue light burst from the window. The Archmage’s eyes could not focus on it, or flick to the side. He heard a distant roar, and shouts of alarm, and a sound like a massive tree splitting in two.

“Don’t fret about the guards, Archmage,” the demon crooned. “Aziraphale won’t kill anybody.”

The cold glass left Gabriel’s lips. He made an aggravated, formless noise. Well - wouldn’t be trying that again. He sounded like a sad horse.

“I know,” said the demon. “He’s a sweetheart. Would you believe, he asked me to do this because he didn’t want to hurt you?”

The creature stood, sauntering away from him and back again, looping in and out of his vision. It was maddening, trying to follow him with his eyes, straining when he slipped into a blind spot and out again. “You know what he said to me? He said to me, ‘Crowley, dearest, you’ll have to go up there and explain this all to the Archmage, because if I have to see him again, I may just kill him.’ Now, of course, I thought that was a perfectly fine plan. Quite alright with me, offing the Archmage.”

Said Archmage did not know what was more infuriating - that he could not roast the demon with a ray of fire, or that he could not roast the demon with totally devastating comebacks. Suffering both at the same time, along with the villainous monologue, was practically agony.

“But not Aziraphale,” the demon continued. “No, he’s, like - genuinely merciful. He knew he’d regret doing you harm. He even asked me not to kill you!”

Another flash of blue-white light from below, another roar.

The mattress bounced. The demon had flung himself atop it, next to the Archmage. He leaned his chin onto one fist, and spun the glass bottle between his fingers. “See, that’s what I don’t understand. Aziraphale is just — wonderful. Absolutely unique, and truly, properly kind, and you tried to take that away. I do know the desire to possess a being like that, be-lieve me,” he laughed and rolled his eyes, like this was nothing more than a twisted gossip session. Easily the worst slumber party the Archmage had ever attended. “If I didn’t know better I’d lock that pretty creature in my garden in the Abyss and keep him all to myself. And you had him. He’d have done anything for you, and you tried to squash out everything that makes him so wonderful, you daft bastard.”

The demon sighed, in mocking misery, and rolled onto his back.

“Now see, here’s the thing,” he continued, gesturing with the glass bottle. “I told Aziraphale I wasn’t going to kill you, but for a while there, I was going to do it anyway. Split you tongue-to-gut. But then, I thought that’d get everyone in town all upset - oh no, someone’s killed the Archmage, blah - and I don’t want to put that all on Aziraphale. So, if you’ve got to leave him alone, I thought, what’s the worst way I can think of to do that? What would hurt me the most?”

The Archmage would have clenched his jaw if that were still possible. The demon reached for him, snarled his long, clawlike fingers in the Archmage’s hair, and twisted his head so they were looking into each other’s eyes.

“You are going to forget him,” the demon said. His voice echoed with intensely powerful magic - magic that rewrote the truth to match his words. “You’ll forget you ever knew the dragon Aziraphale, or the shopkeeper Mr. Fell. You will never venture into his shop, or his home. If you meet him by chance, in any form, you will end the encounter with all haste. If you learn his name again, it will fade from your mind within the day.”

The charm of a lamia is notoriously difficult to resist, and few had ever been so motivated to be convincing. The Archmage blinked, and the magic took him, soft and sweet and hypnotic.

The next day, the Archmage would awaken to find he remembered nothing of the previous night. Because he remembered nothing, he could not explain to a very concerned pair of guards how all the doors to his tower, as well as the exterior gate, had been encased in a five-foot-thick sheet of magical ice. He was promised that he would be retrieved from his bedroom window by the afternoon. 

And that night, the drunkards, wanderers, and late-night lovers would look to the sky, where the credulous among them would swear they saw a silver dragon pass overhead in silence, and arc with immeasurable grace towards the mountains. And some would swear they heard the laughter of the devil himself tumbling from its wings, bright, high, victorious.

~X~

“So,” Crowley cleared his throat, as they sorted through the recovered books. “I’ve been thinking-”

His voice trembled, high and strained. It was practically vibrating with significance. Aziraphale turned to look at him, eager, encouraging.

For some reason, the moment Aziraphale met his eyes, Crowley crumpled like a broken branch. “Why do you do that?” he whimpered.

“Do what?” Aziraphale asked, self-conscious.

“You-” Crowley groaned, gesturing angrily with the book in his hands. “One minute you’re twenty feet above my head breathing ice storms, and the next you’re down here, looking at me like — like that.”

“Like what?”

Crowley groaned again, and bopped him gently on the side of the head with the book he was holding. “Like that. All sweet and doe-eyed.”

“Does that bother you?”

He gestured helplessly with the book. “Yes! Because I — I love you, whether you’re down here or way up there. But I can’t make sense of it when it comes to me. Mr. Fell wasn’t an idiot but, you know, I could flatter myself — oh, foolish human, falling for the sex demon. Easy prey, so on. Six-hundred-year-old silver dragon, though, not so much. How does a six-hundred-year-old silver dragon look at me like that?”

Aziraphale stole the book from him, so it could no longer be used as a bludgeon. He looked down at the cover. It was written in a language no one spoke anymore, and only the magic of his own obsession had kept the pages from disintegrating.

“It’s not complicated,” he said quietly. “I love you too.”

Crowley only seemed to crumple further. “Okay, but why—”

“Shush,” Aziraphale said.

He scooted over to Crowley, and offered his hand. The demon, without a second of hesitation, took it in his. Perhaps he thought it was a request for help up, but instead, Aziraphale pulled him down. He smiled, despite himself, watching all Crowley’s spindly limbs fold inelegantly until they were both sitting on the carpet.

Aziraphale thought for a minute, and then said, “I much prefer it down here, rather than way up there. It’s too quiet in the clouds. But down here — here—” he took both of Crowley’s hands in his, and lifted them to his lips. He kissed the backs of his fingers. “Here, people are making things, changing things, inventing things. I have seen the most brilliant, beautiful lives pass through this earth, and the layers of creations they leave upon it. The music, the language, the food! It’s endlessly exciting. Purposeless, useless, and futile, oh, I adore every minute of it. I never want to look away. But I don’t just want to watch, I want to live. I want to make more useless, clever trinkets, and read more books. I want to make those dancing shoes, and I want to dance in them. I want to feel the kind of love that makes all these mad people do stupid things, and I think,” he pressed Crowley’s hands over his own heart, both of them, trying to still the trembling, “I think I do.”

Crowley smiled. Perhaps Aziraphale hadn’t even noticed, but he could feel the shape of a small leather pouch under his palm. It was a new addition; somehow, he knew precisely what was inside.

“Stay here,” Aziraphale pleaded. “Live with me and be mine. Or wander as you will, and come back to me.”

Crowley curled his fingers into Aziraphale’s tunic, and tugged him gently forward into a quick, delighted kiss. “I’ll stay, Aziraphale,” he said.


End file.
